


Power On

by folie_aplusieurs



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: AU, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Evil Corporations, Fluff, Futuristic, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Idk how to tag this i barely have the outline done, M/M, Paranoid Pete, Robot AU, Robot Patrick, kinda robot au, not really a robot AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-14
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2019-11-17 18:32:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 42,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18104060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/folie_aplusieurs/pseuds/folie_aplusieurs
Summary: "I'm real," the robot says, voice glitching with static and fear. "I'm Patrick. I'm real."~A robot AU where Patrick's a robot but not really and Pete hates robots but he doesn't hate Patrick.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've been really excited to write this but I don't if I like the way the writing style turned out. Either way, I hope you enjoy. It should be a fun time <3

Pete used to protest the whole robot thing. He used to be good at it, too. Passing around petitions to forbid the machines in certain cities, organizing rallies outside factories, and writing strongly worded letters to tape to the company's door was practically second nature.

Until it stopped working.

There wasn't a war when robots became a commercial product, advertised alongside phones and tablets, but it felt like it. The numbers in Pete's anti-robot meetings dwindled, cities overturned bans, and the company's headquarters grew without stopping. 

The world began to change and, try as he might, Pete could do nothing to stop it. Every day, another friend raved to him about the latest model of their AI. Every night, his screens were overcome by ads for any kind of companion he may desire-- platonic, erotic, romantic, subservient... the list went on.

Over time, days became months; months became years. Pete lingered in them, labeled as a coward. The company,  _Immortal Industries_ , ruled the world, handing out robots like they were the cure to cancer. And people played along, trading cash and dignity for wires and make-believe friends.

But Pete had the scars to prove he was right.

More petitions. More protests. More letters that never worked.

The world changed. The world kept spinning.

And Pete, stuck and sick to his stomach, could do nothing.

~ ~ ~

Pete's new apartment reminds him of college. His parents picked it out, a pretty little place in the middle of a city promising success to all who check in. The complex is tucked away in the "nice part of town" and all the brochures in the front lobby have smiling faces and pretty scenes.

Like college-- and most things in life-- Pete doesn't trust it. He leans forward in the seat he's waiting in and flips the flyer over, hiding the smiles.

He knows his parents mean best. And, by that, he means they feel bad that the whole "revolution against the robots" thing never took off in the way he wanted. As robots rose in popularity, so did Pete's name in infamy. He went from being the face of the rebellion to being the known asshole with a bot-bashers blog-- a blog with 39 followers, not that he's counting.

His family staged an intervention months ago, dragging him out of his friend's basement, and collaborated to ship him off... here.

Here, of course, being the heart of the robot mania. Here being the hometown of  _Immortal's_ headquarters. He's not too certain how aware his family was when they decided on this.

Then again, he did promise to at least try to get over his robot hate. Whether or not he meant it is an entirely different matter. Smiling faces on staged flyers won't change the fact that the  _Immortal_ skyscraper looms outside the window. 

Pete bites his lip, stomach twisting as he waits for the man at the front desk to finish helping an elderly woman set up the voice recognition system on her mailbox. He'd told Pete to wait, to hang out for a bit, and that'd he show him to his place in a bit. But waiting can only last so long before Pete's itching to make a run for it.

As if sensing his desperation, Pete's phone buzzes. 

"Hey," he says, answering with a heavy sigh. "I haven't checked in yet, I--"

"So you did make it safely," his mom says, clucking her tongue at the end. "I thought we promised you would call to let me know."

"Yeah," Pete says. "Once I was actually in the apartment. I'm waiting to go up but--"

His mom interrupts again, something he's grown used to over the course of his life. "Well, I'm just glad you got there okay. I know how you feel about airplanes and traveling and, well, this is such a big step for you." She pauses, the end of her statement accompanied by clanging dishes. "Riot make it, too?"

"Yeah, I kinda think I'd be freaking out a bit more if my dog didn't survive the flight," Pete says, gently nudging the puppy's crate with his foot. There's a soft shuffle from the golden retriever inside followed by a smaller sniff. "She could have stayed with you. I know you two have that late night TV marathon bond going on."

"She loves hospital dramas and I expect you to play it for her every night," his mom says, laughing lightly. "But as much as I would have loved for her to stay and keep me up with her barking, you know that's not what Samantha suggested. She really thinks that--"

"Really thinks that having the dog around will ease my stress," Pete says, quoting his therapist with a bored tone. "I know."

"I mean it when I say you're gonna do great," his mom says in that familiar half-proud and half-concerned tone. "I know this is a big step for you after--"

"Yeah." Pete cuts her off before she can start talking about failed protests and bad decisions. "Did you know this place is, like, right by  _Immortal'_ s main building? I might die from air pollution, that's how close the factory is."

"They don't do anything that messes with the air. It's all computer tech," his mom says, missing the point. "And we were aware of that. I just thought... Well. I guess, I--"

"Did Samantha have anything to say about it?" Pete asks, hating how his legs are bouncing and how his chest is stinging. "Because I thought she said I shouldn't purposefully trigger myself and this seems like it could end up with a trigger."

He's just quoting Samantha's advice but his mom pauses and he can imagine the frown on her lips-- the one matching his own.

"But you've been doing so well," she says in one breath, her voice louder as if she's pressed the phone closer to her cheek. "And you're always welcome to come back if things are really terrible but I thought it'd be a good start. I know you hate hearing it but robots aren't going away and if you can get used to them... Well. I don't know. What do you think?"

Pete thinks that he's always been too much of a momma's boy and his mom's pleading tone has him giving in before he's fully thought it through.

"Fine," he says, almost whining. "It's been years and, I guess, the guy I lived with back home had one of the older models. I never... I didn't see it much but it was there."

"Exactly!" His mom says, back to her peppy self. "See, you've already made huge steps. In a few weeks, you'll be wondering why you ever bothered to worry about such silly things."

"Right." There's more Pete could say, questions about if his family's going to get a robot now that he's gone or if his siblings have said anything about missing him yet, but the words drop away when he says the employee at the front desk waving a key at him. Pete nods and stands, stretching out his legs with a groan. "Hey, I think I gotta go now. Call you later?"

"Oh, oh, of course," his mom says. "Let me know how your first day goes."

Pete's still smiling at the grade-school tone by the time the phone's back in his pocket and he's left staring at the brown-haired man offering to pack his bags onto a cart.

"Oh, sweet, you've got a pup," the worker says-- a younger boy named Brendon, going off the tag pinned to his striped shirt. "You filled out the forms for that, right?"

 

“Right,” Pete says, trying to remember which form that was. When signatures are all just clicked boxes online, it can be difficult to remember what the content for each one actually was. Still, he lifts the crate with both hands and watches as Brendon finishes tucking all the bags safely onto the cart like a game of Tetris.

“Okay, cool,” Brendon says. “So, you’re Wentz, right? We’ve got you up on the second floor. I’m sure you did the VR tour of the room but I’ll show you around anyway. Our visuals are pretty good on tech but some people still prefer seeing the real thing.”

Brendon says this with a barely concealed eye roll so Pete simply smiles, calming himself by listening to the snuffling breaths of Riot in her crate.

He follows Brendon to the elevator, listening to the younger ramble about nearby businesses and work opportunities. He explains the key policy to Pete— “there’s an option to trade out physical keys for a fingerprint system”— and only looks slightly offended when Pete says he’s a bit more old-fashioned.

“Oh, man,” Brendon says, walking down the halls and lugging Pete’s cart of bags and boxes behind him. “You didn’t read shit about this place then.”

“Are you allowed to curse?” Pete asks distractedly when Brendon stops in front of a door, digging in his pocket for the keys. “Like, that feels pretty unprofessional.”

“They pay me to walk you to your room, not to censor myself,” Brendon says, finally freeing the key and jamming it into the lock. “Anyway, just. Try not to freak, okay? It’s all complimentary and—”

The door swings open gradually, mockingly, and Brendon’s words drown beneath the sudden rush of blood in Pete’s ears. 

The lights flick on by themselves; fans kick into action to cool the summer air sneaking inside. Brendon keeps talking, keeps ranting, and Pete remains frozen on the steps.

In the middle of his apartment, a robot lifts its head and smiles.

“Hello,” it says, blinking big blue eyes with nothing but programming flickering behind them. “How are you?”

“What—” Pete’s words stick in his throat as he tries to stumble back, caught only by Brendon reaching to steady him. “What the fuck is that doing here?”

Brendon’s smile is sly but kind, his eyes playful and reassuringly human. “Who’s cursing now?”

“Shut up, I mean it,” Pete snaps, tugging his arm free and keeping his eyes on the… the… the  _ thing _ in the room. Blonde-haired and blue-eyed and pale as porcelain, the robot’s smile only grows. “I didn’t have a fucking robot with me when I came and I know my family wouldn’t ship one here without telling me so—”

“Yeah, okay, you need to calm down,” Brendon says, suddenly serious as he gently leads Pete inside. Pete stumbles over his own feet as he walks in, his limbs fighting against any action that leads him closer to the robot. Brendon blinks down at Pete’s useless legs before turning to face the machine. “PK-84, go wait in the bedroom.” 

The robot— named PK-84, apparently— gives a jerky nod before turning to walk down one of the apartment’s halls, a door clicking open and shut in the distance. Pete calms once it’s out of sight but, still, flashes of metal and pain and crazed glass eyes play on in his mind like a bad dream, like a flashback, like a memory he’s tried to forget.

“Every apartment comes with one,” Brendon’s saying when Pete takes a breath and can finally hear properly again. “ _ Immortal _ sponsored it since they’re so close. Some kind of marketing scheme? It’s a subservient model so once you download the app and sync it, it’ll do your cleaning and errands and respond to your voice. I know some people are iffy about the ethics but don’t worry. The AI is pretty ridiculous but it’s still just a robot so—”

“I want it gone.” The words pull free from Pete’s throat at the mention of  _ robot _ and he turns his gaze to Brendon’s frustrated eyes. “I’m not living with a fucking robot watching my every move. I’ll leave, I swear.”

“Okay,” Brendon says, stepping back and drawing the word out. He runs a hand through his hair, blowing out a breath through pursed lips. “Well, here’s the thing. We can do that but it does have a charge attached. Since the detail was mentioned in the fine print and all. I mean, if you can pay it now, we can get rid of it and send it back but if you don’t want the charge then you need to wait at least a month before submitting a removal request. I shouldn’t tell you this but I think that this one’s part of a test for a new model so they’re trying to work the prototypes into society through stuff like this. It’s shady but I’m not paid to ask questions.” 

In the mess of Brendon’s words— amidst the rules and charges and frantic pacing of his own heart— Pete hears just one thing and he clings to it like hope on the horizon.

“So you’re saying I will be able to give it back,” he asks, sounding breathless. Brendon furrows his eyebrows.

“Yeah. After a month,” he says. He keeps talking but Pete can’t hear it. 

His budget didn’t include paying for a robot to get kicked out and he certainly isn’t going to beg his mom to make it leave. 

One month. He can make it one month. That’s what he and Samantha had been working towards, after all— coexisting with the junk piles.

One month.

And if he can’t? Well, Pete’s certain a fall out of a second story window can fix any problems the robot might have.

~

Pete’s conviction that he can survive hanging out with a robot for a month lasts all of three days. 

The first few days aren’t so bad. He simply sets up the app and assigns the robot to his voice. He ignores the personalization options— the parts where certain personality traits are offered, such as musical interest or, apparently, sass— and skips over the naming process. Pete already has a pet and he doesn’t need another one. 

PK-84 doesn’t do much on the second day either, sitting around and watching Pete with such an expectant gaze that his skin starts to crawl. It’s then that Pete learns about setting up daily tasks in the robot’s memory and he creates a handful of simple assignments just to keep it away from him. Things like plugging itself into the charger, checking the mail, or going to buy bread every morning allow Pete enough distance from the robot to feel safe.

But on the third day, Pete finds a malfunction in PK-84’s programming— he can’t turn off the communication option. And that is more than enough to have Pete scrambling to find the money required to have him removed.

“Go sit on the couch,” Pete demands, pointing at the furniture and using a tone that has Riot— the golden retriever puppy packed off with him— scurrying to do what he says. “What? No, not… Not you, girl, you’re fine. I’m talking about  _ it _ . The wire tangle over there.  _ Sit _ .”

“Alright, I’ll sit,” the robot says, nodding to itself and following Pete’s directions. It has a habit of doing that— repeating what Pete says. Almost as if it’s learning, which is a thought Pete doesn’t like. Still, it’s more obedient than other models and Pete appreciates the haste in which it does what it’s commanded. It sits on the edge of the couch with its hands curled around its knees, blinking every five seconds but looking no less menacing as it does so. “May I ask a question?”

Pete blinks back. “What?”

“Would you like to name me Wire Tangle? Or would you prefer to stick with Tech Head?” The robot shifts its head to the side— like a fucking dog— and offers a small smile. “You have referred to me as both of these terms in the past twenty-four hours, along with It and That Robot Over There. If you would like to program a name, please visit your  _ Immortal  _ app and—”

“Yeah, god, I know,” Pete says, rubbing at his temples. Riot presses up against his shin, a comforting presence. “Maybe I don’t want to give you a name, you ever think of that?”

The robot tilts its head further to the side. At his feet, Riot does the same.

“Oh,” the robot says, painted on lips pursing ever so slightly. “May I ask why not?”

“Because you’re a  _ robot _ ,” Pete snaps. PK-84 frowns and it only serves to fuel the frustration in Pete’s gut. “And you’re broken, by the way. I’ve tried, like, fifteen times to make you stop talking and you just keep going.”

“Repair requests can be made through the  _ Immortal _ app,” PK-84 recites. It pauses, straightens its head, and continues. “Would you like to hear information about my communication options?”

Pete is getting nowhere with this. “Will it teach me how to shut you up?”

“As a newer model for  _ Immortal Industries _ , I am designed to be the most realistic artificial intelligence found in a human-form robot. As a result of testing, communication options have been limited,” PK-84 says. “My speech and communication patterns are currently set at default but can be changed in the  _ Immortal  _ app. Every newer model comes with a variety of personality options. Once a trait is decided, it is downloaded into my software.  _ Immortal Industries  _ hopes this will allow for a more personalized and real experience with your new robot companion.”

“So, what? You have a build-a-personality option?” Pete asks, wrinkling his nose. PK-84 waits a beat, processing, and then nods.

“If that is how you would like to name the process,” he says. Pete shakes his head.

“That’s fucked,” he says, reaching down to tug at Riot’s collar to keep her from getting too close to the robot. Still, she pulls back and he’s forced to let go. “I’m leaving. Stay put.”

“Stay put,” PK-84 says, copying Pete again. “Staying put.” 

Pete narrows his eyes at the robot once more before turning to go hide in his room. It’s not as calming as it should be— not with that thing out there— but the barrier gives him some room to breathe.

So  _ Immortal  _ is working on a communication upgrade. He reaches for his phone, fingers flying across the screen to pull up his blog in hopes of warning his trusted followers.

Instead, his thumb stumbles across the apps and he’s looking at PK-84’s home screen on the  _ Immortal  _ app. It’s basic, barely enough to have Pete as frustrated as he was before, and he sighs as he scans over the information presented. Fully charged and active, last shut down was the night before when Pete figured out he could shut it off remotely. The list of daily tasks blinks with checkmarks next to each item, assuring Pete that PK-84 got it all done as quickly as he could. The rest is just as boring but knowing the facts about the robot helps him maintain his composure, just as Samantha had suggested it would when he called to rant to her about his situation. She’s not supposed to be his therapist anymore but he’d rather make impromptu phone calls to her from across the country than try to find someone else to trust. 

So, with her advice in mind, he flicks the screen over to the personalization page. 

The list of traits are all dulled in their deactivated states but he reads each one over carefully, trying to piece together an image of the robot sitting on his couch outside. Sass and sarcasm, musical interest and ability, comfort and optimism, timidity and bashfulness— they're too human.

And they all match its appearance too well.

Perhaps that’s the part Pete hates the most— just how attractive his robot is. Most robots he’s seen have been machines with dulled grey eyes and unmoving lips. Always stuck in a smile and always moving with sticky limbs, they’re terrifying.

But PK-84? PK-84 almost looks human. Handsomely so.  _ Immortal  _ designed the robot with fluffy blond hair styled across its forehead, clearly synthetic but shiny and soft. Though its eyes have the stereotypical exaggerated size and glow, they sparkle with a pretty blue and gold shade, long blond eyelashes coming down at regulated beats to add to the realism. Fitted in a casual button-up shirt and jeans, smiling as if it means it, PK-84 is the most human robot Pete’s ever seen. 

And he hates it.

He hates how the robot’s eyes seem more alive with each day, how they don’t stare blankly ahead. He hates how it smiles, how it laughs, how it makes jokes and grins as if it's proud. He hates how its voice could be a home, gentle and inviting as it is. He hates how, if it were human, he’d already have claimed it as his soulmate.

But it’s not and Pete hasn’t. If anything, he’s determined to never see it again. And if that means sending it on menial tasks and begging it to shut up, then so be it.

Outside, Riot yips and Pete groans, shaken out of his thoughts as he sets his phone down and stands. Riot keeps barking— high-pitched and rapid-fire— and he sighs, fixing his hair as he goes into the main room.

He keeps his eyes firmly away from PK-84, sitting still on the couch and gazing down at its hands. 

Riot whines, pawing at her food bowl.

“What’s up?” Pete asks, passing by the robot with minimal chills down his spine. He kneels at Riot’s side, scratching her head as he looks down at her bowl. “You hungry? Alright, just a bit.”

He lifts her bowl, opening cabinets to find the pack of dog food he bought for her.

As he fills her dish and puts the bag away, he pretends not to see PK-84 turning its head away, blue eyes bright as it watches Pete.

~

It happens a week later. A week after Pete’s decided that, maybe, PK-84 isn’t as bad as every other robot Pete’s met. Maybe  _ Immortal  _ really has raised their standards and made trustworthy bots. Maybe Pete can last the rest of the month. Maybe everything’s okay.

Every maybe cracks in a week.

Pete can hear Riot’s yipping from down the hall, walking back from another failed attempt to find a job. He’d planned to wallow alone in his bedroom for the rest of the day but the sound of Riot’s barking has such plans fading as quickly as they appeared.

He rushes to the door, fumbling to find his keys and wishing, for once, that he’d opted for the higher tech option. Already, images of glitching robots and vulnerable beings flash through his mind, every anti-robot forum horror story forcing their way into his mind with flashing signs that say he should have known better.

“Riot?” He calls, finally getting the key in as the barking stops. “Riot, sweetie?” 

The door shoves open. 

PK-84, kneeling by Riot’s bowl as Riot eats. It has one hand scratching down Riot’s back and the other crooking fingers beneath her chin, the lightest smile on its face as Riot wags her tail and marches closer for more. The robot’s grin grows and its eyes seem almost fond.

Riot lifts her head, little pink tongue darting out to lick PK-84’s hand. PK-84 laughs— giggles, more like— and bends down lower, lips pursed as if to kiss the dog. It’s an inch away and—

“Riot. Here. Now.” Pete’s voice is more waver than it is demand but Riot doesn’t seem to notice the difference, turning and racing towards him with her tail wagging twice as hard as before. It’d be adorable but his eyes catch on the confusion etched onto the robot’s face. He swallows hard, leaning back and prepared to run. “PK-84…”

He trails off but his words hit the robot like a switch, glass eyes dimming and relighting as its face goes blank, smile dropping and limbs jerking as it stands back up.

“I refilled the dog’s food,” it says, neither proud or ashamed. Pete bends down, lifting Riot into his arms and holding her close to his chest without once looking away from the robot’s eyes.

“That’s not in your daily tasks,” he says slowly, quietly. He imagines he can hear whirring coming from the robot’s head as it frowns and takes in Pete’s words.

“No,” it says, just as slow as Pete. “It’s not. My apologies. Perhaps I confused myself when I saw you feed her yesterday. I will correct my settings to prevent future mistakes.”

But confusion fills PK-84’s eyes once more, a darker version that Pete can’t understand. It lasts for but a second and then it’s moving to the couch, sitting with certain movements.

Riot still held tightly in his arms, Pete runs to his room and slams the door.

Once he’s inside, Riot leaps from his arms to the bed, unaware of the trouble she was part of. Pete’s hands slip over the door handle, searching for a lock but finding none. He swears, biting back more words just as quickly because the robot’s right outside his door, the robot’s in the same building, the robot could get in at any time.

Palms sweaty and fingers nearly numb, Pete forces his phone from his pocket and switches on the  _ Immortal  _ app. The robot’s daily tasks are done and Pete can barely think as he types in a new one, eyes blurry and hands shaking so horribly that he needs to type it in three times to get it right. A job to walk to the store and back twice— a job that should take approximately an hour with how leisurely the robot’s strides are. Pete enters the task and waits, pulse thudding like a fist against his throat when he hears PK-84 get up to leave. 

Knowing the robot’s gone should make it easier to breathe but each inhale feels more like he’s blowing up his own panic, a ballon in his gut that won’t deflate no matter how tightly he wraps his arms around himself. Every memory and every fear burns through him and it does so at the speed of light.

Phone still in his hands, he doesn’t notice when he dials Samantha’s number. All he knows is that he hears ringing and then a familiar voice calling his name.

“Pete?” She says. “Pete, just breathe.” 

Doing so feels impossible but another voice— another human voice— allows the air to feel lighter than it had mere moments before.

“He… It’s alive,” Pete exhales once he has the chance, collapsing onto the bed with the phone pressed close to his face, desperate to catch any sound that might come out. “He was playing with the dog and I never said it could do that, I never turned any of the traits on, so how—”

“I can’t understand you when you’re rambling,” Samantha says calmly, more friend than therapist as she speaks. “Now, tell me slowly. What happened?”

Pete takes a breath and swallows, each action more difficult than the last. “I… I got back and I heard Riot barking. I thought- Of course I thought the robot was doing it. And it was but… not violently. It was petting Riot and laughing at her and it looked so damn  _ human  _ and it’s not supposed to be like that, it’s… It’s a  _ robot _ . So why was it smiling? Why was it playing? It… It knew that Riot was hungry and refilled her bowl. Why did it know how to do that?” 

Each question is like a tangle in his throat, a spiderweb in his veins, a wire come undone somewhere in his chest. 

“Bots are programmed to recognize their motivations,” Samantha says as simply as ever. “What did it say its reason was?”

“It… It said that it saw me feed Riot. That it got confused.” Pete takes another deep breath, doing a better job at not choking on this one. “But that’s a human thing, too. Being confused. So why would it be confused?”

“It doesn’t have the vocabulary to describe its own emotions, I assume, so it has to borrow from ours,” Samantha explains as she’s done a dozen times before. “Did it hurt Riot? Did it hesitate to listen to you when it told you to stop?”

“No, but… but it looked…”

“Don’t think of how it looked— robots mimic human expression and action if they’re in the early stages of adapting to a new owner,” Samantha says. “But what did it do?”

Pete presses his lips together, closing his eyes. “It backed away. It stopped and apologized.”

“Just as I assume it was programmed to do by the manufacturer,” Samantha says, sounding as if she’s nodding to herself. “And what does it mean to be programmed?”

A question from every session and a question that succeeds in calming Pete down as his eyes open and fix on Riot curled up at the foot of the bed. “It means that it wasn’t its choice. It means that it’s just something another human told it to do.”

“Right,” Samantha says. “And I know you trust humans. Robots are just an extension of a pre-existing human thought. They can’t feel, Pete. They can’t be good or bad. By assuming either, you’re projecting emotion onto it. You see what you expect so why not expect the best?”

“Easier said,” Pete says though his heart rate’s already slowing. “So I just let it be?”

“For the most part, yes,” Samantha says. “But if you’re really concerned, you can shut it off for a bit. Get used to having the physical object with you and then reintroduce the foreign idea of intelligence within it. Work up to it. Don’t feel like you have to accept it all at once. No one’s forcing you to do that.”

Pete nods, sighing softly now that his breaths are back in his control. “You’re right. Of course. Thanks, I… I didn’t mean to freak out.”

“Fears are a process,” Samantha says. “And I’m proud that you’re so dedicated to conquering yours.”

They chat for a moment more, discussing Pete’s lack of work and the benefits of having Riot nearby. Pete sinks into the familiar routine of dissecting his thoughts and words with someone else but it can only last for so long before Samantha apologizes and says she has to go. Pete sets his phone to the side and reaches for Riot, pulling her into his lap with minimal struggle from the tired pup. She whines softly but settles down once Pete starts scratching at her ear.

It’s strange, he thinks, to know that a robot had been doing the same thing. There’s a certain calmness that settles over Pete when he feels Riot’s warmth against his palm, when she snuffles and rubs her wet nose across his leg without thinking. How could a robot ever understand something as simple as petting a dog if it can’t understand good or bad? Pete’s chest grows tighter but he ignores it, leaning into the gentle waves of serenity that fill the air as Riot slowly falls asleep.

Her head pops up, though, when the front door opens. Pete does the same, jerking at the shuffle of mechanic feet across the floor, the staticy voice asking if there’s anyone around. Pete holds his breath, holds Riot close though she yips. His fingers itch to reach for his phone, to have PK-84 leaving once again, but he can’t move, tied up in his own alarm.

The shuffling outside stops and Pete, heart in his throat, lets go of Riot to check the app. 

**_STATUS: CHARGING_ **

It just plugged itself in. Pete relaxes fractionally and sets his phone back down.

Riot leaps back up on the bed with a clumsy bounce, making her way to Pete’s lap to curl up once more. Pete shuts his eyes and lies back. It’s too early to sleep but he’d rather waste an evening then tempt the robot outside.

With thoughts like sparking wires and a heartbeat like a screw come undone, Pete tries to fall asleep.

~ ~ ~

Pete wakes to the sound of scratching and scraping, to the sound of heavy breaths and nail-on-chalkboard whines.

It's still dark out, still night, and he groans as he checks the time. He frowns upon seeing that it's just past midnight, rolling over and rubbing at his eyes.

"What is it?" He asks, sitting up. The lamp flicks on, reminding him that every piece of tech in this house is watching his movements. "Do you need out, girl? Are you--"

Riot doesn't stir from her spot near the edge of the bed, tucked up in a circle as if nothing can wake her without her permission. A ball of fluff with no care in the world, chin resting lightly on her paws. She's asleep; she's still.

Pete chokes on his words.

He doesn't think of the robot until his phone is in his hands, yanked free from its charger. He pulls up the  _Immortal_ app, thumb hovering over the shutdown option. Now that he's more awake, he can hear the noise coming from the main room, the thud and electronic voice. He should turn it off now or, at least, call Brendon and complain about the malfunction. 

The app status says that PK-84 is charging but it also says to check on it, to make sure everything's alright.

Pete doesn't obey apps but he stands anyway, biting hard on his lip as he convinces himself to open the bedroom door and step outside. The ruckus pains Pete as he makes his way down the hall, following the sound of glitches and sparks. Riot keeps on the bed and Pete glances back longingly, wanting some form of companionship as he ventures into this danger. 

When he looks back forward, though, his vision blurs.

PK-84 stands against the wall, charger still attached to the base of its neck as it tugs and pulls, eyes flashing on and off with more emotion than Pete's seen it ever have before.

"Stop, stop, make it stop," it says in rushed words, panicked words, and its eyes land on Pete, filling the room with an awful blue glow. "I don't understand. I don't know what's going on. Help me, I--"

Its voice grows more afraid with each word, frenzied and pleading, and it ties a knot of terror in Pete's throat. The robot reaches out for Pete, grasping at the air, and Pete slams his thumb on the shutdown option.

PK-84 rocks violently, head slamming against the wall, but the glow dims and its voice dulls. It spasms, ripples of uncertainty crawling across its body, and Pete holds his breath, nothing but fear and curiosity tugging him forward to make sure it's really shutting off.

"No, no, no," PK-84 says with a scratched record voice, each word lower than the last. Mechanical hands fall but Pete can see where nails were tearing at a place behind the robot's right ear, white lines of desperation crossing each other on the metal and plastic.

"What the hell?" Pete breathes once he reaches the robot's side, PK-84 gone as still as the lifeless thing should be. He raises a hand, meaning only to feel the marks left behind. 

PK-84's head snaps up and Pete jumps away, screaming at the convulsing machine before him.

"No!" PK-84 yells louder than before, stamping its feet and raising its hands to scratch across that spot again. "No, no, make it stop!"

Make it stop, exactly. Pete stumbles back, falling over his feet and onto the floor, gazing up at the thing with a tremble in his breath. His hands barely feel like his own as he fumbles for the phone, finding the app and pressing the shutdown option over and over with no result.

"This isn't right!" PK-84's voice cracks as it surpasses its programmed volume, the app in Pete's hand struggling to keep up with the robot status. "I'm not this. I'm not fake. I'm--"

"Stop," Pete cries-- if only to drown out the robot's wails. "Stop, please."

The app goes dark and Pete's heart does the same, faltering and skipping beats and daring to stop as PK-84 rambles uselessly to itself. 

"Real. I'm real. I'm real. I'm human. I'm real," it says, sounding breathless. 

"PK-84." Pete speaks the way he would to Riot if she were misbehaving, stern and in control-- the way Samantha taught him. He feels anything but. "PK-84, stop."

Burning blue eyes fix on Pete, unblinking and afraid. "I can't. Help me. I'm not this. I'm--"

The app lights up and Pete's mind floods with gratitude and desperation. He looks down, barely reading the  _Force System Reboot_ title before clicking the new option. 

Again, the robot jerks with a broken sound but it lasts for only a second. This time, the eyes don't merely dim; they go dark completely.

"No, please," it says in a weaker voice than before, limbs going limp as it lowers itself to the ground against its will. "I'm real. Patrick. Patrick. I'm Patrick."

Pete backs away, still sprawled across the floor.

Collapsed against the wall, the robot's chin falls to its chest and it heaves out the same thing it said before.

"I'm real," it says, voice glitching with static and fear. "I'm Patrick. I'm real."

 

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a rather long chapter. But it seems that most chapters in this fic are going to turn out this way lol so I hope that you like it! And thank you to everyone who has commented on this so far. I promise I'll do my best to make it worth your while. Also, I wasn't able to edit this chapter as thoroughly as I'd like so I'm sorry for any mistakes you may find. Feel free to let me know if you see something that should be fixed.

Morning comes with the gentle slowness of a moon tugging waves to shore and Pete greets it with dark eyes and shaking hands. Across from him, his robot leans against the wall with the lifeless look of something forcibly shut down. 

Pete’s phone has gone uncomfortably warm in his hand, living on fifteen percent of charge as he toys with the idea of turning the machine back on. But even as his thumb hovers over the wake button, his thoughts are meaningless. He has no plans on what to do; he barely knows what’s going through his own head.

The night before plays on repeat in the background of his mind— the shouts and the shaking and the fear. The robot hadn’t been violent— another thought he forces himself to have— but what’s the chance the same thing happens again? Wouldn’t that just be fitting? Overcoming his fears only to have it happen all over again?

Pete drops his phone to the couch and reminds himself to breathe. He needs answers and he can only get them from the thing lying limp on the floor. But before he does that…

He nods to himself, set on his plan, and marches over to PK-84.

The robot’s lighter than he expected— filled with nothing but wires and tech, Pete supposes— and he's able to lift it onto one of the dining room chairs without much trouble. He keeps his eyes down, away from the thing’s painted expression, and breathes a deep sigh of relief once the robot’s carefully balanced, only slightly tipping forward. Pete doesn’t have a rope but PK-84’s own charging cord is long enough to wrap around his frame a few times, each circle tighter than the last. Around and around and then tied in the back, Pete tugs to be certain it can't be freed. Satisfied, he steps back and observes his work. Once he's sure all’s well, he grabs his phone.

And he wakes PK-84 before his common sense can tell him to do otherwise.

Pete’s never watched a robot turn on before but he’d always expected it to be a bit less human than what PK-84 does. He’s imagined flashing lights and the whir of a computer hidden beneath constructed skin and bones. He’s thought of jerky motions and an instant smile on its face.

He never thought it would be like this. This, where PK-84 blinks as if to brush away a bad dream and sighs—  _ sighs _ — as if it’s been holding its breath all night. It stares at its own knees for a silent moment, face scrunching up in mild confusion as pieces of its body seem to unfreeze. Relaxed and easy, PK-84 shuts its eyes for a second more and then opens them, their glow back but not half as bright as they had been at night.

“Uh, good morning,” Pete says, trying to shove his phone into his pocket before remembering he’s stuck in pajamas. “I have a few questions.”

Like a switch being flicked on, PK-84 suddenly goes rigid. It blinks again and its joints lock up. 

When its head lifts to look at Pete, there’s a blank smile on its face. 

“Yes?” It asks, leaning forward against its restraints but not as if it knows they’re there but as if its awaiting instruction. “What can I help you with?”

Pete jerks at the voice, an electric shock of his own, but refuses to turn his back in the way his nerves are pulling at him to do. He’s already started the conversation; he can’t turn away from it now.

“Do you… do you remember last night? At all?” He asks, the words a stutter on his lips. 

PK-84 blinks again. Pete’s not sure whether it's following the proper pattern or not.

“I was charging all night,” it says, its eyes still vaguely glazed. It’s wrong, so terribly different from the night before. “Or did you want me to speak about earlier in the evening?”

“I—” Pete stops, running a hand through his hair. “You don’t. Okay.”

“Okay.” Copying, echoing. Is it learning?

“Where are you from?” Pete asks, taking a step forward without thinking. “Have you always been like this?”

“I’ve always been part of _Immortal_ _Industries’_ team. All bots share common programming and so I consider myself part of that legacy,” PK-84 answers. “But my full identity was fully constructed one month ago.”

“Identity. Right,” Pete says, hand back in his hair and yanking. “And what is that? What are  _ you _ ?”

PK-84 blinks again. It’s definitely not following its assigned pattern. “I am your robot. I’m sorry, have I done something wrong?”

“No, you—” 

No. It’s done everything right this morning. Answered each question like a manual and watched Pete with those deadened eyes. It’s behaving exactly the way it should be.

Pete’s heart pounds to the unsteady rhythm of terrified and relieved.

“I don’t know,” Pete says, revising what he was going to say. “I’m trying to figure that out.”

“Oh,” PK-84 says. “Then might I suggest a system check-up? The option is on your app and you can—”

It stops, the staticy sound of its voice crackling and fading out. Pete would almost believe it’s shut off again if not for the way its eyes have shifted slightly to the left, the way its lips have curved into a gentle grin. It’s looking behind Pete and Pete bites his tongue, hoping this is a nightmare he can wake from.

PK-84’s eyes crinkle as its smile widens, bright white teeth showing beneath its lips, and a sound almost like a laugh escapes its throat.

“Cute,” it says.

“Cute?” Pete turns, repeating PK-84 as he searches for the source of the robot’s madness. He sees nothing at first— nothing but the wall and front door— but then his gaze lowers and—

Riot’s head snaps up from where she’d been sniffing the floor, tail wagging and feet stomping as she notices the attention has turned towards her. She spins, yipping, and then bounds over to Pete.

It’d be adorable, everything Pete needs to calm down, if not for PK-84’s soft laughter as she jumps up on Pete, small front paws pressed just beneath his knees. 

Pete bends to rub the back of her neck but his eyes stay up, watching PK-84 as his smile grows. There’s nothing dark about his grin— if anything, it’s more childish than malicious— but robots don’t smile at dogs. Robots don’t understand cute or adorable or anything that might be emotionally based.

Pete swallows, gently shoving Riot from him and stepping back. “Go to bed, Riot. Bed, now.”

Riot hesitates for only a moment before following the command. Pete feels a bit bad for the sad trot back into the bedroom but, more than anything, he’s relieved that his mom’s insistence that they train her finally paid off.

Once Riot’s out of sight, Pete reluctantly looks back to PK-84. 

PK-84’s eyes are distant, head turned to follow the direction Riot had gone. Pete’s imagination— always too active for his own good— play scenes of the robot lashing out against his puppy, machinery overpowering the frail dog. His stomach turns and dizziness settles into his head; still, he stands his ground. 

Maybe it’s all just a misunderstanding.

“Why did you tell her to leave?” PK-84’s smile is gone, its eyes distressed. “That wasn’t nice. I haven’t seen a puppy in so long.”

Pete toys with the idea of shoving PK-84 out the window. The only thing stopping him is his refusal to step any closer than he needs to.

“That’s not funny,” Pete says breathlessly, heart pounding in his throat and stalling his words. 

PK-84 doesn’t hear him. “She was just playing.”

Pete licks his lips, mouth suddenly dry. “PK-84, pay attention.”

“Can you call her back?” Talking over Pete, eyes still turned away. “I wonder if she can do tricks.”

“Pk-84, I—”

“She listened to you so well.”

“Come on, I’m talking to you! PK-84!”

“How old is she?”

“PK—”

“My last dog was—”

“Patrick.”

The robot stops. Pete wishes he could say he’s shocked at the slow blink, the parted lips and furrowed brows, but, as PK-84 looks over, he realizes that a part of him had been expecting it.

“Where…” PK-84 sounds younger than before, sounds more human than before. “Where am I?”

Pete doesn’t answer right away, not even when PK-84’s eyes turn to him. His voice is stuck in his throat and he keeps it there, afraid of what might come out if he speaks. 

His… His robot’s programming is messed up, that’s all it is. Or maybe this is part of the newer model they’re testing— something more lifelike than ever before. Maybe nothing’s wrong.

But if nothing’s wrong, then why is PK-84 heaving for breath like a creature caught in a trap? Why is it looking around as if it’s never seen this room before? Why is it cowering from Pete as if he’s the thing to be scared of?

“You’re… You’re in my home,” Pete says uselessly. “I just moved here. Uh, California. LA. Right?”

He doesn’t know why he’s trying to explain anything to a simple piece of machinery.

And he doesn’t know why PK-84’s eyes widen in such a way. It doesn’t answer, looking around once more before looking down at itself. It makes a startled noise and starts twisting, turning, tugging at the cord wrapped tight around it. Pete watches, his own eyes wide with disbelief as PK-84 lets out a panicked breath— something like a sob, something like a machine reading out an error— and starts thrashing in its bindings. Pete almost feels guilty but, more than that, he feels afraid. He stumbles back, phone tight in his hand as he turns and tries to find the manufacturer’s number anywhere on the app. A helpline or contact option— anything to get this thing away from him.

His hands shake too much for him to focus and he mutters curses to himself.

“This is fucking insane,” he says, scrolling through useless paragraphs on the  _ About Us  _ page of  _ Immortal Industries’  _ website. “What the hell is this thing? What the fuck is a Patrick or—”

“Me.” 

Pete doesn’t want to turn, doesn’t want to face the thing that’s suddenly gone still on the chair as if it’s given up. But something about the softness of the word has Pete glancing over with a cautious gaze.

“Me,” PK-84 says again, more insistently this time. “I think Patrick is me.”

Pete tries to say it’s wrong but the words get choked in his throat. A second passes and PK-84’s eyes are a shocking blue glow.

“You’re a robot,” Pete says slowly. “Aren’t you?”

PK-84 blinks. The glow remains. 

“I don’t know.”

~ ~ ~

The last thing Pete wants to do is talk to…  _ Patrick _ … but that’s the only way he’s going to get close to any answers. So, he brings out his laptop, pulls a chair up next to  _ Patrick  _ and starts to research.

He doesn’t bother looking through glitches or program errors because he’s already spent years doing that, years of pulling data from stories and sources to prove that robots are wrong. And while he’s heard of robot’s forming their own identity, he’s never heard of one behaving like this.

And the robot— and  _ Patrick _ , Pete thinks with a sick twist in his guts— watches him with eyes as hopeful as Pete wishes he could be. 

“Were you ever owned by anyone else before coming here?” Pete asks, searching for Patrick’s identification number online. His best guess right now is that the company or a previous owner forget to reset whatever character they downloaded onto their bot. Even that one is only a slight possibility.

Patrick wrinkles its— his? Its?  _ His _ — nose. “No one’s owned me.”

“Right.” Nothing comes up under the PK-84 search and Pete sighs. He looks back up at Patrick and something feels messed up inside of him, a glitch of his own going back and forth between fear and curiosity. 

When Patrick breathes, there’s the whir of a fan inside working overtime because he doesn’t need oxygen when he’s running on wires and a full charge. But his breaths are measured anyway, steady with the forced composure of someone falling apart.

“It’s cold in here,” Patrick says. “Why is it so cold?”

_ Because you’re made of metal. Because you’re designed not to overheat.  _

Pete pretends he doesn’t hear, looking back at his screen though all the results show nothing but  _ Immortal _ ’s hope to make the most human robot. He stares at it until it all blurs together.

“Do you know what you are?” He asks, his body tense and twitching with the need to run away. He feels stupid asking like he’s at an ouija board waiting for a ghost to respond. It’s not possible and, even if something does happen, there’s a more logical reason behind it.

“I… I think I’m supposed to be like you. A human,” Patrick says. It’s not a logical answer.

“Are you sure… Are you sure you’re not confused?” Pete asks, still not looking up. “Like, what do you know about robots?”

“ _ Immortal Industries _ is known for its groundbreaking advancements in technology and artificial intelligence. Their work in the robotics industry is well known. Current models include companion bots and worker bots. To learn more about a specific—  _ Wait _ .” Patrick cuts off, emotion flooding his tone once more as he draws back harshly. Pete, staring at him openly since the robotic spouting of programmed information began, tries not to look away when Patrick’s eyes focus on his. “I don’t care about robots. How did I know that?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Pete says quickly, a headache prodding at his mind. Patrick somehow manages to distort his features into something fearful and Pete turns away. He doesn’t need to comfort the robot, he just needs to figure this out. “Look, you think you’re human? Then tell me about  _ you _ . Where you grew up or went to school.”

“Chicago,” Patrick says, his features easing into something softer than before. “I graduated from Glenbrook South High School a few years ago. I tried college for a bit as a music major but stopped going when my friend started talking about making a band. So, I— the last thing I remember is that I work at a music store with some friends and play instruments on the side.” Patrick’s gaze is distant, the camera lens in it trying to adjust as he focuses on nothing but his own memories, a bashful smile on his face. “I’m good at that. Playing instruments. And writing music but no one ever believes the drummer should write the song. But, trust me, I’m good at it.”

It’s only a few sentences but Pete can see it all so clearly. He can see Patrick, a more human version of this Patrick, laughing with friends from behind a drum set, teasing and joking around. He can hear the youthfulness in his voice when he talks about his music. He can feel the person inside the machine when he smiles sadly and mentions the friends that have somehow been left behind.

“I believe you,” Pete says. He doesn’t know whether he means Patrick’s last sentence or all of them. “But you don’t remember anything about how you got here? Like this?”

Patrick’s smile dims and he refocuses his eyes on Pete. Pete tries not to be disturbed by the sound of a camera locking onto his face but he shudders all the same.

“No,” Patrick says. “I don’t.”

Pete sighs. “Wonderful. Okay, then. What about your friends? What are—”

Something knocks against the front door and they both jump at the sound. 

“Um, coming!” Pete says when the knocking starts up again after a pause. “Just a second.”

He stands, moves a few feet away, and then looks back at Patrick. Tied up and watching everything with those big blue eyes… Pete’s heard of people who enjoy the company of their robots  _ like that  _ and he’d really rather not be remembered as the neighbor with the robot bondage kink.

“Just untie me,” Patrick says and, god, Pete hopes that Patrick can’t tell exactly what he’s thinking. “You know I’m not going to do anything.”

But does Pete know that? His skin goes cold as he imagines taking that risk.

“No,” he says, walking around Patrick to get to the back of the chair. “You can… Just wait somewhere else for a bit.”

He pulls him to the bedroom, Patrick protesting and wiggling against his restraints as Pete sets him up in the corner of the room.

When Riot looks over from the bed, ears lifted in curiosity, Pete groans.

“Riot, stay there,” he says, pointing at the bed. He turns back to Patrick, eyes hard. “Don’t kill my dog.”

Pete’s never seen a robot roll its eyes before but, somehow, Patrick manages. He ignores the sight, if only because it’s the most human thing Patrick’s done. 

“I’ll try to be quick,” he says, wondering why he needs to say anything more to Patrick. He cuts off another statement, another comfort, and leaves without another word, pulling the door shut behind him. The second he hears the latch click in place, his breaths come easier than before. As if the door’s his safety net and he no longer needs to fear the danger of falling through to the other side, his mind clears and he walks with steady steps to answer the knocking on his front door.

“Hello?” He asks, half-expecting Brendon and half-expecting his mom’s overprotective smile. Instead, he’s greeted with a group of strangers gathered around the door with matching smiles and giggles. The one up front, an older woman with gray-black hair pulled into a tight ponytail, lifts her hands to show off the cake held in them.

“Hi! We saw you moved in a bit ago and thought it’d be nice to welcome you to the neighborhood,” she says in a cheery voice as if the large ‘welcome’ written on the cake isn’t obvious enough. “I hope it’s not too bothersome.”

“Not at all,” Pete says though his mind’s already trying to creep back into the room with Patrick and Riot. “It’s really sweet of you to come by.”

“Of course!” She says, her smile growing as she passes over the cake. “It’s important to us that everyone in the community feels welcome. Speaking of which, we thought it best to give you some inside tips on nearby areas. Did you know there’s actually a shortcut to the bus station? If you cut through an alley and then a nearby park, then—”

Pete stops listening after a while, smiling awkwardly with a cake in his hands as each of his neighbors takes turns giving him useless information about coupon codes and local businesses. He appreciates the sentiment but, right now, he’s one bend away from breaking. Here he is in a beautiful apartment in his dream city with kind and caring people offering him friendship and all he can think about is the robot tied up in his room. It doesn’t feel real and, in all matters, it doesn’t feel deserved.

“— and if you see a grey cat wandering around, it’s probably Sheryl’s. Unless it has a stripe on its tail, then it’s Mike’s cat from upstairs,” Kaylie, as Pete’s learned her name is, says. “That reminds me— if you have any pets, you should probably get them used to the others around here. There’s a dog park not too far and it’s a great place to meet new—”

“Great idea,” Pete says, seeing his out and lighting up as he nods. “I was actually going to take my dog for a walk so I should probably get to that. She, uh, she has a strict schedule and we can’t get off it.”

No one seems to believe him but they nod anyway. 

“Right,” one of the older men from the back says. “Do you need company? My bot’s watching my place so I have all day to—”

“Nope, we’re fine, thanks,” Pete says, already halfway to shutting the door. How much time has passed? Pete hates the part of his mind that wonders if Patrick will be upset at being left alone for so long. “I’m sure I’ll see all of you later, though!”

“Of course!” Someone says. “We still need to meet your robot, after all!”

Pete can’t get the door shut fast enough and, even when he does, he turns and leans against it, heavy breaths scraping across his tongue. He doesn’t remember everything that was said but, apparently, the welcome committee wants to meet his robot.

Pete’s eyes shut and he covers his face with his hands. He doesn’t know what to do with his robot but he knows he can’t just let it roam free. Who knows what something like Patrick can do? What if—

Riot barks from the room and Pete jerks away from his thoughts, the yipping sound relentless as he tears free from the door and starts running. He knew he shouldn’t have left her alone in there. She’s just a puppy— just a helpless little dog and if Patrick’s anything like what Pete believes then there’s no way she could have defended herself. Sick and half crazy, Pete shoves past couches and chairs to get to his door, forcing it open with enough power to have it slamming back into the wall.

“Riot?” He asks, sounding like a mother looking for her child. “Riot, girl, are you—”

Riot barks again from her spot on Patrick’s lap, barely paying Pete any attention before returning to her task of wagging her tail and licking Patrick’s face. Braced on her front paws and nuzzling her nose into Patrick’s cheek before considering it worth exploring, she’s twice as affectionate with him than she’s ever been with Pete. And though Pete’s first instinct is to pull her away from Patrick and to have the robot shut down for good, he stops. He watches Patrick’s smile, listens to his laugh, and, for once, it doesn’t sound electronic at all.

He doesn’t want to but Pete begins to believe Patrick’s story. So it’s only fair that he let Patrick have his moment with Riot because, if he really is what he claims, then there’s no way to guess when he’ll ever feel this happy again.

~ ~ ~

Pete doesn’t want to go through the hassle of charging Patrick but one look at those flickering eyes has him grumbling and dragging Patrick back to his charging station against the living room wall. 

“It’s nothing personal,” Pete says, hating himself more with each word he exchanges with Patrick. “I’ve just had bad experiences with bots and would rather not take the risk.”

“But I’m not a bot,” Patrick says, giving up on his struggles and slumping against his restraints. “I just look like one.”

Pete doesn’t linger too long on the implications of that. “Right, whatever. You need to charge, anyway, and the best place for that is here.” He sits on the floor, unpackaging the new charger he’d purchased earlier today. Patrick’s old one is still wrapped around him and, well, Pete knows they can’t use that.

“Wait, wait, no, don’t,” Patrick says, starting with his struggles again as he looks down at the charger. “I don’t need to be charged, Pete,  _ please _ .”

Pete pauses at the sound of his name on Patrick’s lips, his spine going cold as it replays in his head. Most robots don’t call their owner by their name unless asked and Pete had only, tentatively, introduced himself to the bot once after Brendon had left and there’d been nothing more to do. How does it feel, Pete wonders, to have his name pressed against those metal lips, that artifical tongue? Does it taste the way it does when Pete says Patrick’s name, bittersweet and human? Or does Patrick only feel sparks?

Pete shakes his head, returning to his task with greater vigor than before. “Come on, it’s just like sleeping, right?”

“No,” Patrick says, shaking his head. “No, it hurts.”

Pete’s hands still on the charger once again, the cord free and held in his lap. He hadn’t thought of what it might feel like to be charged, to be plugged in all night. He bites his lip and looks over, looks at Patrick’s legs beside him as they bounce up and down restlessly, worriedly. God, but he’s so human. Pete brushes the back of his hand against the skin of Patrick’s ankle, between the sock and jeans, and imagines that it’s not as cold as it feels.

Patrick moves his leg away with a soft sound, a sound Pete doesn’t give much thought to.

“You still need to be charged, though,” Pete says. He sounds like he’s talking to Riot, promising her that a trip to the vet won’t end in shots.  _ Come on, pal, it’ll be fun!  _ “What if I shut you off and then plug it in? Would that help?”

“ _ No _ .” Patrick tries to draw away from Pete, an action so sudden the chair nearly tips over. Pete twists from his cross-legged position to one on his knees, grabbing onto Patrick’s arm to keep him from falling. Still, Patrick tugs violently before going stiff. “No, I  _ hate  _ that.”

“Oh my god,  _ fine _ .” It’s like arguing with an old friend. Pete’s exasperated and he wants the conversation done but, strangely, he’s interested in seeing how it plays out. “If I don’t shut you off, can I charge you?” 

Patrick hesitates and it’s such a human thing that Pete’s stomach sinks deep into his guts. He doesn’t look at Patrick’s eyes or notice the way he bites his lip, cringing and pulling away from the mechanical feel of his teeth. He tells himself not to pay attention to the fingers tapping against thighs or the unsteady rhythm of his breaths. The hesitation is human enough.

“Fine,” Patrick says, at last, the word half-choked. “But you have to promise that you won’t ever shut me off again.”

Pete’s always considered himself overdramatic and he’s heard it said a thousand times before. He’s paranoid and afraid, certain something’s always out to get him. He hates all robots and would rather see them dismantled then as a friend. He doesn’t trust them.

And he still doesn’t have to. Because, here? Patrick is trying to trust him.

“Yeah, okay,” Pete says, mouth dry when he meets Patrick’s eyes, when he feels that gentle blue glow on his skin. Patrick stares like he doesn’t know the light is his own. “I promise.”

~ ~ ~

Pete wants to believe Patrick when he says he’s human but he also wants more than the small details Patrick gave. He wants to see more than snippets of a human life based on words and stories that could be made up. He wants to see it all. He wants to see proof.

Typing “missing Patricks” into his phone’s search engine that night feels shitty but the guilt is quickly replaced by heavy sighs and rising blood pressure when he sees the infinite results that appear. Biting back a more dramatic groan so as not to wake Riot sleeping at the foot of the bed, he scrolls back to the search bar and tries again.

_ Patrick. Glenbrook South High _ .

If human Patrick looks anything like robot Patrick, then it’ll have been years since he’s been at the school. But Pete doesn’t care about his age— he just wants to prove that a human Patrick is real.

A few results down, past the school directories and contact information, Pete finds an online archive of the school’s yearbooks. The pictures aren’t the greatest quality on his phone but he flips through them all the same, seeing no one that looks like Patrick in the few digital copies he goes through. With each page, he’s convinced his robot made his own identity up. Pete’s close to giving in and calling it a night when he opens another page.

_ Band rehearsals _ , it says up top. Grainy pictures of students in a music room fill the screen, kids holding instruments and playing together as they practice for the school’s music showcase the next day. Though the pictures are still, they flow with youthfulness and life, a nostalgia Pete has no right to claim from these strangers. They’re warm in the way they look at each other, alive in the laughter he can so clearly hear.

At the bottom of the page, in the right-hand corner, there’s one more picture. A kid sitting at the drumset with a small group around him. Cheeks red and smile bright, a curly-haired boy behind him poking at his shoulder. The boy at the drumset is young, lips pink and eyes squinting behind a thin pair of glasses. A sweater hugs his chest and a beanie sits upon his red-gold head. Each pale hand holds tight to his drumsticks, arms lifted in a manner that has Pete hearing the crash of music endlessly throughout his head.

_ Joseph Trohman (senior) teases as friend Patrick Stump (senior) practices drums a day before the school’s talent show. _

Suddenly, looking for his robot’s missing past isn’t quite so fun. 

Pete closes the page about Patrick’s life— Patrick’s life before he ended up as a robot in Pete’s apartment— and opens one of his social media apps. If Patrick was a kid once then he must have had social media.

Or not, as Pete finds after a few failed searches. No accounts under his full name and no mention of him on the school’s page. Aside from the one picture he’s seen, it’s as if Patrick Stump doesn’t exist. It’s as if the internet doesn’t want Pete to think he exists.

“Fine,” Pete says to himself, sitting up with gritted teeth. Riot blinks awake at the sound but nuzzles back to sleep without much problem. “You’re really underestimating my obsession with this.”

He tries nicknames and misspelled names, tries seeking by just a few letters and by last name alone. He reverse-searches the image and goes through the school’s directory to find an address. Nothing appears.

It’s nearly two a.m. when he types a different name instead— Joseph Trohman.

That one comes up. An account with an older version of that smiling friend, his profile picture some dumb pose outside a music store. Pete’s heart constricts and then beats harder than before.

Joe doesn’t post much but his most recent update, his most recent picture, convinces Pete that he just might be living a nightmare.

_ Don’t respond to this with his full name,  _ the post says.  _ Don’t tag anyone you don’t know. Just spread these pictures and let me know if you see him anywhere. My best friend is missing. _

Added to the post are a few photos of Joe and some other boy. The two of them standing behind a counter, records and instruments around them— inside the music store, inside that life Patrick said he had. Joe’s beaming and holding a paper that exclaims it’s their first real job together, his friend leaning forward with a more hesitant grin, a more awkward stance. His cheeks and neck are pink from either heat or a blush and his face is half-hidden by the hat he has on. But Pete still sees those bright blue eyes, though they look more green in the photo. He still sees the shape of that smile. Even with the red-brown hair brushing down the boy’s neck, too long and in need of a cut, he sees something he wishes he didn’t.

The second picture is closer, is just that boy by himself. He seems caught off-guard by the camera, eyebrow cocked and hand lifted to bat it away. He’s older in this photo, grinning crookedly as if he’s smarter than his friend and has better things to do than pose for a picture. His cheeks are round in a way they weren’t in the other image— the way they aren’t on the robot outside— and his hair’s been cut shorter, albeit for some sideburns sticking to the sides of his face. All of these are details that should convince Pete that it’s the wrong Patrick. His Patrick doesn’t have a scar in his eyebrow like that. His Patrick doesn’t have that ring of gold around his pupil. His Patrick isn’t so happy, isn’t so young, isn’t so  _ alive _ .

But they have the same smile. They have the same eyes.

Pete wanted to believe Patrick but, still, he finds it hard to accept what’s right in front of him. 

Phone still in his hand, Pete shoves aside his covers and stands. Quietly enough that Riot won’t wake, he walks across the room to the door. When he opens it, he imagines he can already see the blue glow on the walls.

Patrick seems asleep when Pete walks towards him, eyes shut with beams of blue light emanating from beneath his eyelids. His chest moves in gentle rises and falls, breathing in a way he doesn’t need but in a way Pete appreciates as he now steps forward. 

When he’s close enough, Pete lifts the phone next to Patrick’s face, the picture enlarged so he can catch each detail. With his other hand— shaking and uncertain— he gently brushes back the blonde bangs hanging across Patrick’s face.

Up close, side by side, it doesn’t take much work for Pete to pick out the differences. Patrick’s eyes are shut so he doesn’t need to see the same blue glow that it’s in the photo. He’s wearing the tight t-shirt and black jeans the company sent him in, not the hoodie and hat the internet stranger is hiding in. He’s smaller, bonier, paler.

As Pete’s phone starts to dim, though, he can’t deny that they have the same golden eyelashes casting shadows across their cheeks. They share the same pointed nose, the same high cheekbones and soft chin. 

Even in his charging state, even in his picture, Patrick’s lips are too pink to be real. They’re full and plump, too special to be an accident or trick.

Pete pulls his hand from Patrick’s hair. He puts his phone away. 

As he walks back to his room, he tries to decide whether or not the pit in his gut is wonder.

~ ~ ~

When Pete walks out to greet Patrick the next morning, disconnecting him from the charger and watching as something like life floods back into his face, he ignores the strange glances he receives. Patrick’s lips part and memories of that picture fill Pete’s mind like fire. He staggers back, face going red as he struggles to blink away the image of a human Patrick overlaying the robot one tied up in his home. His eyes betray him, though, and each time he blinks he sees the image of Patrick’s friends imprinted on the back of them. The life he had; the life he lost.

“Are you going to untie me today?” Patrick asks. His hands twitch in his laps and Pete sees nothing but fingers wrapped around drumsticks, arms raised to begin another beat. Even his voice is more human than before, filled with frustration instead of that mechanical tone he should have.

“You’re like a real-life horror story, you know that?” Pete asks, clearing his head of any happy photos. 

“Trust me, I  _ feel  _ that,” Patrick says, half-grinning though it seems strained. “You’re not the one that’s been turned into a piece of metal.”

Pete shakes his head. “Is that what you think happened?”

“It’s the only theory I have,” Patrick says. “Unless you’ve got something better?”

Pete’s phone burns in his pocket. 

“Patrick,” he says, feeling the name this time as it rolls across his tongue and out his lips. “Patrick Stump.”

If Patrick had anything more to say, all his words look lost. His eyes widen until he’s more doll than anything else, his breaths paused as if he’s been struck. “How do you—”

“I found it online last night in a yearbook. It’s a nice name, I guess. Definitely makes you more human.” Pete tries not to flinch when Riot leaps onto the couch in the other room, the sound of her paws louder than his voice. “Your friend from Chicago, Joe, posted about you, too. I think he’s looking for you.”

Patrick’s shoulders fall slowly, his eyebrows drawing together as he lets out a soft breath. Everything he does seems to be in slow-motion, his bottom lip trembling and his eyes blinking. The blue glow shines like there are tears but Pete knows that robots can’t cry. 

“I’m sorry,” Pete says quickly, backtracking as something in Patrick’s expression tears at his heart. “I shouldn’t have said it so suddenly, I just thought you should know. Do you want to see the pictures he posted? Do you want me to send him a message about everything? Or maybe—”

“I don’t know what’s going on,” Patrick says in a staccato voice, each word more afraid than the last. “I don’t understand how I got here. I don’t know what this is, I don’t know what I am, and it’s not fair! I need to leave, to go, to… to figure this out. I need to let him know I’m okay. But am I okay? Am I? I don’t even know what I am!”

As he mutters to himself, Patrick begins tugging at the bindings again, violently and viciously. Pete should stop him before he tips the chair over or hurts himself but the frantic thrashing has his heart back in his throat, his mind back in places they shouldn’t be. 

“Patrick,” he says quietly. “Patrick, stop, you—”

Patrick pauses suddenly, looking at Pete with a wild gaze. “I need to go. I need to find my friends, my family. Joe was always looking at those stupid conspiracy boards, maybe he’ll know something. Or my mom, she… My mom would know it’s me. She’d know what to do.” His voice sounds like it should break into a sob, like it should do anything other than crack and click whenever he takes too sharp a breath. “At the very least, we could call the company. This is a mistake.”

“No one makes a mistake this big,” Pete breathes. 

Patrick’s sentence devolves into a sob, or the closest he can get to one. He deflates, falling forward against the cord wrapped around his middle, and shudders as if he’s found a way to cry.

“Please,” he says, looking up with eyes as bright and dry as the first time they met. “Please, just let me go.”

When he says it like that, Pete sees only the boy smiling in the picture he found last night.

“Fine,” he says, stumbling forward. “Yeah, okay. Fine.”

His fingers fumble as he begins to undo the knot in the back, shaking as Patrick watches him without moving at all. He’s not breathing anymore, not blinking, and Pete’s hand scrapes across a screw in his lower back and—

_ And suddenly he’s back in that club, back with his friends, back with the pounding lights and stench of sweat. He’s back against the wall and there’s a bot before him, shouting and screaming and pressing its awful cold hands around his throat. Screws and uneven plastic dig into Pete’s skin and he can’t cry for help, he can’t fight back against an enemy made to last. His nails slide across metal and a fist— a weapon— collides with the side of his head and he’s back there and he can’t breathe and it’s like dying, god, he’s dying, he’s— _

Pete jerks back, dragging air into his lungs with a desperate gasp as his elbow slams against the wall. Patrick calls out to him but Pete can’t hear him over the rush of blood in his ears, the sounds of his own cries in his mind. His head spins, ice and sharp metal thrashing around inside his skull, and he can’t meet Patrick’s eyes before turning to run back to his room, leaving Patrick half-tied on that chair.

_ He can’t scream _

_ He can’t breathe _

He can’t put up with a robot anymore.

~ ~ ~

Pete wakes with new bruises from the day before— to his arm and to his ego. After leaving Patrick, he’d spent all day in his room, leaving only to take Riot on a walk and pretend he couldn’t hear Patrick calling for him. He wakes with nightmares still pressing into his brain. He wakes alone.

He wakes to the sound of knocking and shouts of his name.

With a groan and a yawn, Pete pulls himself out of bed and goes to answer the door. He walks past Patrick, still tied up and left uncharged, and scowls at Riot sleeping curled in his lap.

“Traitor,” he grumbles, ignoring the snort he hears in response. 

Someone knocks on the door again and he shakes his head. “Coming!” 

When he opens it, despite all expectation, it’s not another neighbor with a cake. Instead, three men in dark suits stare back at him with stiff smiles, the Roman numeral for two stitched into their clothes.

“Hello. I presume you’re Peter Wentz?” The man in the center, an older man with grey-black hair asks. Pete furrows his eyebrows together.

“Yeah, but I usually go by Pete,” he says. “I’m sorry, can I help you?”

“We hope so,” the man says in a cheery voice. “Oh, can we come in?”

“I just woke up,” Pete says slowly, looking back and forth between the three, those fake smiles stirring something sick into his gut. He tightens his grip on the door handle, arms tensed and ready to push it shut. “Can you explain it out here?”

The man’s smile shifts into something sharp. Pete feels its edge in his skin. “Please, we’ll be quick and out of your hair, I promise.”

“Okay, then. Be quick. I haven’t had the chance to clean so, really, out here will be fine,” Pete says, more sternly than before. The men sigh and look at each other, exchanging glances that mean nothing but trouble to Pete.

“Very well,” the man says. “Now, we don’t want to alarm you but there have been some rather strange searches in your internet history recently. We wanted to come by and be sure you weren’t hacked or in trouble.”

Pete’s frown deepens. “Weird searches? What do you…”

_ Patrick _

_ Missing Patrick _

_ Patrick Stump accounts _

Oh.

Pete’s vision blurs for a quick moment but not before he sees their logo again. The roman numeral; the two I’s.

_ Immortal Industries. _

They’re here for Patrick.

Pete opens his mouth to tell them what they so clearly want to hear— that his robot’s alive and they need to fix what they’ve done. But the words stick in his throat like traitors, hiding the truth under the memories of what Pete’s searches pulled up.

A kid just wanting to laugh and play drums. A kid with friends who love and miss him. 

A boy who works at a music shop and hides behind dumb hats. A boy with the brightest smile he’s ever seen and a life he deserves to live.

A robot now trusting Pete; a person suffering as no one should.

“I hardly ever remember what I look up,” Pete says when he remembers how to speak. “It was probably just some 3 a.m. search based on a dream or something. I’m sorry it caused you to come down here, though. It really wasn’t anything more than a stupid group of words put together.

A phone rings and Pete jumps, going hot and cold at once. The man on the end, a shorter and rounder man, pulls his cell phone from his pocket. Nodding at the others, he leaves to take the call.

“Well, that’s good to hear,” the man in the center says, drawing Pete’s attention back to him. “Still, we’d like to do a quick sweep of your home. Be sure no one’s gotten into your system or is keeping you captive.”

Pete tries to laugh at that, forcing breath out of his lungs with a shaky sound. He sounds like Patrick when he tries to breathe. “Don’t worry, they’d get tired of me pretty quickly.”

“Peter— Pete. We’re not trying to inconvenience you in any way,” the man says. “But you do understand why we’d be concerned, correct?”

No, he doesn’t and he doesn’t try to. He feels weak, dressed in his pajamas and protecting something he should hate. Though he’s in his own home, he feels terribly out of place.

The second man, the one to the side, looks past Pete with a frown.

“Sir,” he says, “where is your robot?”

Pete turns before he responds, heart beating uneasily in his chest when all he sees is an empty chair and a charging cord resting on top of it.

Panic doesn’t set in until he feels hands at his shoulders, shoving him aside. Fear doesn’t hit until he sees the men storming through his home, shouting demands to each other about  _ finding that damn machine _ .

Reality doesn’t come back until there’s another hand at his wrist, wrapped gently but urgently as it tugs him out the door. Pete looks over and the flash of blue is a welcome sight.

Patrick— untied and with a backpack clipped around his chest— pulls him outside and slams the door shut behind them, the men yelling from inside as they realize what’s been done. With a sound that could be a growl, Patrick twists the handle and watches as it breaks off in his hand. His eyes widen and he pauses for just a moment, long enough for Pete to discern he hadn’t known he could do that. His grip on Pete’s wrist loosens, barely so, and then they’re running again. 

Pete’s already having a bad day, and he considers himself quite unlucky in general, so it makes sense when Patrick pulls him towards the elevators only to find the man from before blocking it. His hand’s already halfway in his pocket, putting away his phone, and Pete’s blood chills when he sees his hand shift towards the gun on his hip. He pulls it free before Pete’s next breath, aiming it at Patrick without hesitation. 

The bullet sails into the wall instead of Patrick’s chest when Pete shoves him towards the stairs instead, the two of them half-falling as they race their way down. Patrick’s hand finds Pete’s again and, though his touch is cold, it’s a comfort. Shouts and demands ring from above them but Patrick stares only ahead, pushing past gawking bystanders and workers until, at last, Pete feels the cool air of outside greeting his lungs. They run until Pete’s certain Patrick won’t ever stop, not once tiring as he drags Pete past buildings and alleys, blocks from the apartment complex without taking a breath. Patrick runs like he’s waiting to fly and Pete’s the anchor keeping him down. 

When Patrick finally stops, hiding them in the parking lot behind an old antique store, Pete heaves for breath, lungs hurting and stomach twisting as if he’s going to be sick. He bends over with his hands on his knees, coughing and gagging as his body adjusts to no longer being on the move. 

“What… What the hell was that?” He asks between heavy breaths, throat burning with each word. Patrick turns from where he’d been peeking out from behind the building, attempting to scowl at Pete but failing.

“That man on the phone. I heard him,” Patrick says. “He was down the hall but I heard him. They wanted to take me back, Pete. Shut me down, reprogram me so I forget.” 

Though Patrick’s expression is somewhat stuck on the concern he’d shown throughout the run, there’s no denying the intensity in his voice. There’s no denying the way he turns and slams his fist into the brick wall behind him, dust shaking away from the building when he pulls his hand away.

“They know,” he says softly, shaking his wrist out with a wince. Pete wonders whether that’s muscle memory or if he really felt anything. “They know about me being human. It’s all the proof we need.”

“Wait, I’m sorry,  _ we? _ ” Pete asks, blinking and looking back at Patrick. “Did you not see what just happened? Those assholes raided my home before I could get even get dressed. They had guns and threats. Hell, they probably even have my dog.”

Patrick rolls his eyes and Pete hates it, hates how the light disappears and leaves nothing to prove his true state whenever he does that. He hates how offended he feels at the look and he hates how easily Patrick plays into the part of a human even when he’s stuck like this.

“You really do expect the worst of me, huh?” Patrick asks. He unclips the bag he’d brought and pulls it to the front. It’s half-unzipped and he tugs the rest of it free, revealing a wet black nose and a ball of yellow fluff. “I grabbed her when I heard the guy start talking about taking me back. Your wallet should be in there, too. And your phone. I would’ve grabbed more but, well, you know. I really just kinda focused on the things that would get us to Chicago quickly and you seem to have more than enough.”

Pete, now with Riot in his arms and trying to keep her from licking his face and neck too much, stops and stares with his mouth agape. He nearly drops Riot, tightening his hold on her last minute. He may not be the tallest but he’d rather keep his dog safe.

“Chicago?” He repeats slowly. “I’m not fucking going to Chicago. Are you insane?”

“No, actually, I’m a robot. And, if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not stay this way,” Patrick snaps. His voice crackles and scratches when he tries to shout and he grabs at his throat with an irritated grunt before fixing his eyes back on Pete. “I deserve to go back and find my family, my friends. Oh, and, I’m sorry, but you’re caught in this, too. You’re my… Fuck, you’re my fucking owner, Pete. And I hate it but it means people will ask questions about who I belong to and I won’t get anything done because a robot needs an owner. I need a human with me and you’re all I’ve got.”

His words glitch in and out, forcing a pause between each one, but Pete’s too annoyed to care.

“And what do we do when those guys come back, huh? When they decide I’m stealing their property and I’m taken to jail or experimentation? What if I end up like you?” He asks. “I  _ hate  _ robots. I don’t trust them and I don’t like them. How do I know this isn’t some trick from?”

“Yeah, because I planned those guys coming to your place to threaten me. That’s a genius move,” Patrick says, trying to take a step forward but faltering. “Look, all I need is for some accompaniment back to where I live. Then we can go our separate ways.”

“And then what?” Pete shouts, setting Riot down so he can properly argue. “In case you haven’t noticed, you’re a robot. You think your friends are just going to be cool with that?”

“I think it’s better than letting them think I’m dead!” Patrick screams at last, horrible high-pitched noises following the sound. Pete flinches but refuses to look away.

“You’re delusional,” he spits. “Or maybe you are dead. Think of that? Maybe you’re not the real Patrick, you just think you are.”

If Patrick was human, Pete imagines his eyes would flash with fury and he’d storm forward with a fist and a threat. If he was human, he’d scream at Pete and walk away. He’d come alive with fire and pain.

But…

Patrick’s not human. And his eyes flicker into darkness when he steps forward, arms falling limp at his side. Patrick’s not human and his voice gives out halfway through Pete’s name as he falls forward.

Patrick’s not human and, before Pete and in the middle of an empty lot, he goes dark and he shuts down.

Pete catches Patrick before he hits the ground, Riot yipping and running around them as Pete falls to his knees with Patrick in his arms. 

Patrick’s a robot and he’s so cold. 

Patrick’s a robot and Pete shouts his name as if something so simple could wake him up.

  
  



	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is later than I'd like it to be oops... but the chapters after this one are where it starts getting really interesting... I hope you're excited! Thanks for reading!

They’re not friends. Patrick’s a robot— or, at least, his body is— and Pete knows nothing more about him than his name and the fact that he’s got a life he needs to get back to. They didn’t start talking until about a day ago and, well, Pete just generally doesn’t have friends. He has acquaintances and therapists and a mom who checks in on him every night. He has people he knows the names of and people who smile at him when they bump into each other on the street. But he doesn’t have friends. 

And, so, he has no obligation to catch Patrick or feel any sort of fear when he looks at him collapsed in his arms. He has no reason to lift him back up and search frantically for help, hands shaking as he finds his phone in the bag Patrick packed. Still, he checks the app to find out what’s happened and breathes a bit more easily when he discovers Patrick’s simply lacking any charge.

He has no obligation to drag him to a local park— one of the newer ones with charging spots for bots and other tech— and plug him. He has no reason to help. 

But he does.

He helps with one of Patrick’s arms slung over his shoulder and his own wrapped around Patrick’s waist, half walking and half tripping their way to the park as Riot follows close behind with sharp yips at anyone who dares to get too close. He drops Patrick into one of the stone seats with outlets and charging cords and struggles to plug him in. Even when the battery bar on his app goes green, his heart pounds with a ferocious pace.

As Patrick charges, slumped to the side with Riot in his lap, Pete goes through the other apps on his phone. On the news app, he learns that no one’s said a thing about the gunshots at his apartment or the break-in. In his messages, he spends time reading through text from his mom assuming he’s alright. Something sick sticks in his throat and, after three deep breaths shaking free from his lungs, he goes back to the post from Patrick’s friend. He goes back to look at the proof that any of this is really happening.

There’s nothing new about the post but seeing Patrick that way— younger, brighter, more alive than he is now— has Pete biting his lip and bristling from the awareness that some version of this boy is seated beside him. He’s almost tempted to take a picture and leave it as a comment but something selfish stays his hand. Besides, people have already responded and Joe’s not replied to one. It'd be a waste of time and there's no proof Joe would believe him, anyway.

Some people in the comments only offer questions and disbelief, promising that Patrick said he was going to be gone for a bit or asking how Joe can possibly say he’s in danger. Others say they’ll look for him but don’t want to get caught up in whatever conspiracy Joe’s found this time. One or two comments mention Patrick’s family and Pete’s guts twist painfully at the words.

He notices that the first few comments are from the same person, a girl named Megan begging for someone to bring Patrick home. Each response from her is filled with exclamation points and promises that she’ll do anything for Patrick to be back. She, too, has shared a picture of them— something grainy with cheesy smiles and arms tossed around one another— and Pete closes the app out before he’s tempted to look to close.

It doesn’t seem to matter, though, what he chooses to ignore. Patrick is still beside him and Pete can’t look away from that. 

Not for the first time, Pete wonders of the life Patrick was stolen from. In all the pictures he’s seen, Patrick’s always looked so young. Something bright burns in his eyes, something more than bulbs and neon, and Pete wonders how it must feel to have that put out. To have his entire being reconstructed into something nearly unrecognizable— something attractive and marketable— and to know that he was never supposed to realize. Because, Pete knows, the men from that morning were there because Patrick found out. Patrick was supposed to be their puppet and they showed up to tie strings back around his hands and throat. 

Next to him, Patrick doesn’t resemble any of that. He doesn’t seem troubled or burdened; he barely seems like a bot. His head lulls to the side in a manner that should be uncomfortable and his eyes are closed tight enough that any blue glow is dulled. He looks like he’s asleep. He looks like he’s human and Pete’s hand lifts with the desire to find out if he feels that way, too.

Pete’s hand is a twitch away from Patrick’s cheek, fingers bent and hand steady as he hovers over the synthetic skin. If he presses down, will he feel something warm? If he shuts his eyes and thinks of Patrick’s words, will he sense the blood and bone that’s been stolen from this life? It’s a horrid thought but, now, Pete wants nothing more.

His fingers uncurl. He imagines he feels something electric reaching back for him.

And then his phone buzzes in his lap, shocking him enough that his arms pull defensively back towards his chest. 

“Shit,” he says, fumbling with the alarm and hoping no one sees him panicking. Soon enough, the sound stops but he’s still met with the sight of what caused the ruckus in the first place. 

_ DAMAGE DETECTED,  _ Patrick’s app says in bright yellow letters.  _ REPAIR REQUIRED. _

With a groan— and a half-skip of his heart— Pete clicks on the alert. It takes a moment to load, circuits and wires circling each other on the screen as if to make him feel better about waiting, but then it pulls up a scan of Patrick’s body. Though it’s all pixels on a screen, outlined with minimum detail, Pete’s cheeks warm and he wonders whether he should look away. 

_ DAMAGE DETECTED,  _ the phone says again as if reading Pete’s mind, this time in smaller letters beside Patrick’s right wrist.  _ REPAIR REQUIRED.  _

Again, Pete clicks on this notice, biting his lip when a pop-up appears to tell him that Patrick’s wrist has been moved out of place— dislocated, but perhaps that’s too human a phrase for something like him— and that it can hinder his functionality. It suggests that Pete take him to a repair shop but also offers a step-by-step guide on how to do it himself. Swallowing down a sigh, Pete presses the second option. After reading through the steps with only a small grimace, he sets his phone down and looks towards Patrick’s wrist.

Now that he knows to look for it, there is a strange curve near the back of it, almost like a bone’s trying to poke through. If not for the grey metal sheen crossing his knuckles from when he punched the wall— the same action that’s led to his injury, no doubt— Pete could convince himself it’s just a broken bone. 

But it’s not and his throat tightens with nausea as he leans over, taking Patrick’s hand in his and placing his thumbs over the displaced metal. Holding Patrick’s hand doesn’t feel the way it should as he applies pressure to the damaged area and quickly tries to snap it back in place. Patrick's not cold or perfectly still. Something warm and alive thrums through him and it doesn’t matter how often Pete pictures wires and electricity; something about Patrick feels real.

Pete bites his lip as he tries again to fix Patrick’s wrist, the stubborn metal fighting against him. He readjusts his grip and Patrick’s fingers brush against his palm, quick enough that Pete can pretend his shudder was from something else. Again, he snaps the wrist down, applying tension where the tutorial said he should. The longer he holds Patrick’s hand, the more certain he is that he’ll wake up. What would Patrick do then if he woke while their hands were so close together? The thought of such an awkward encounter has Pete leaning over Patrick’s arm and trying harder than before to fix him. At last, he hears a crack as the metal snaps back down into place. It sets Pete on edge and he pulls back at the same time that Riot lifts her head and looks curiously towards the sound. Patrick’s hand falls from Pete’s and back to his side.

Somehow, he still doesn’t wake. Pete stares a moment more, taking in the shut eyes and unmoving lips, and then looks back at the app. Just to make sure he fixed the wrist properly, nothing more than that. If he happens to check every other status at the same time then, well, it’s only being thorough. Just the same, checking the missing post again means nothing. It’s the only thing worth looking at now, the most exciting piece of Pete’s life until this mess is figured out.

If this mess is figured out. 

There’s nothing new there, not that Pete expected there to be. All the comments are weeks old and Pete doesn’t quite like the implications there. Patrick said he only remembers his life before being a robot. He only knows that he was once Patrick Stump, a normal human with friends and a job, and then he was PK-84, a robot meant to smile and serve.

If Patrick was missing for so long, who had him before Pete did? Why did the company keep him for so long? What other secrets will Pete have to find?

He pulls up the image Megan posted, the picture of a younger Patrick with his cheek pressed against a girl appearing a handful of years older than him. His face is round and his nose is scrunched, lips pulled back to show as many teeth as he can. Some are crooked and some are sharp. The girl in the picture— Megan, Pete supposes— has a hand on top of Patrick’s head, pulling back his hair and showing off a mole in the corner of his forehead. There’s a blur on the edges of their faces as if they’d been moving when it was taken, grinning and joking and teasing.

It’s all so painfully human. 

Pete’s hyperaware of Patrick sitting next to him. Every time he blinks, he sees Patrick’s smooth pale skin, his perfectly styled hair. He still hears the static tones of his voice, still feels the same horror he does whenever he thinks of those electric blue eyes.

But Patrick’s human and people miss him. Pete sinks into this thought with a hole forming in his stomach. He doesn’t want to have to help him. He doesn’t want to risk his own sanity and life for someone he doesn’t know.

But someone out there does know Patrick. Someone out there misses him. Many someones, in fact.

Pete tries to think of who would miss him if he was in Patrick’s place— a thought that brings bile to the back of his throat. His therapist might call his mom if he missed an appointment. His work might leave messages on his phone about needing to call in if he doesn’t plan on showing up. Even his closest friends might assume he’s just gone dark due to paranoia and isolation. No one would really notice or, if they did, they wouldn’t notice fast enough.

Pete doesn’t understand how so many people could be posting about Patrick, how they can have fun pictures to share and pleading words to leave. He can’t connect with that sort of life.

But he can help fix it.

He can put Patrick back in the world where he best belongs. Maybe, somehow, they can make this right.

~ ~ ~

Pete falls asleep with nerves prickling about Patrick’s inability to wake up. Hours later, with the dark of the night around them, he wakes with the same fear pressing at his guts. Eyes snap open and he blinks into the darkness, body rigid as he remembers Patrick beside him and turns to try and shake him awake one more time. 

There’s no need to try, though. Patrick’s eyes open on their own and he faces Pete with a curious look.

“Is everything alright?” He asks. The words are so mechanical Pete swallows down his fear that Patrick may have gone back to his robot self; or, worse, he fears he dreamt it all up.

“You were out for a long time,” he says, the sentence taking twice as long to say than it should as he tries to figure out a way to word his concerns. Patrick’s eyebrows furrow together and he shakes his head. He’s still Patrick, then.

“Not really. I, uh, I guess I woke up a few hours or so into charging,” he says. “I spent the rest of the time looking things up about the company. You know, trying to figure out what’s going on? It's like my whole head's been turned into this search engine so I decided to put it to use.”

“You were awake this whole time?” Pete snaps, fire flooding his words as he resists from hitting Patrick. “You could have said something, asshole. I—”

“Why?” Patrick’s a robot and he shouldn’t be able to smirk, shouldn’t be able to fit his words so well into Pete’s rant. Still, Pete cuts off and stares as Patrick huffs out a laugh, unplugging himself from the charger with a small wince. “Don’t tell me you were worried.”

“I wasn’t,” Pete says, looking away after a small pause. He glances down at his phone, frowning as he unlocks it. “Other people are, though.”

This catches Patrick’s attention and he looks over as Pete pulls up the missing post from before. There’s a soft gasp before all the pictures have loaded but it’s enough for Pete to pass the phone over, chewing softly on the corner of his lip.

Robots don’t feel, don’t have the systems required to react. Still, Patrick finds a way to break into Pete’s heart when his breath comes out sounding like a sob. He runs his thumb over the screen, the photos staying still because he’s just a machine and technology’s not designed to pay attention to him.

“Megan,” he says in a soft voice when Pete helps him look through the comments. “God, I didn’t even think about her.”

Something hot and sour twists in Pete’s gut. “Who is she?”

“My sister. Older, but just by a bit,” Patrick says, staring down at the photo of the two of them, unaware of how Pete breathes a bit easier than before. “She lives with my mom and I don’t see her too often, not since the divorce, but… Fuck. If she knows, then—”

Then Patrick’s mom might be aware that he’s gone. Then Patrick’s dad might do something stupid and try to call the cops. Then his entire family might be despairing, mourning.

Then they might become a target next.

Patrick shoves the phone back at Pete, lifting Riot into his arms and standing on unsteady legs. Riot wiggles for a moment and leaps to the ground, still waiting by Patrick’s feet as he runs hands through his hair and sighs.

Words pull at Pete’s throat, not wanting to leave as he places them into the air, sticky and disjointed. “Should I… Should I message her? Let you know where you are? That you’re… okay?”

Pete winces at the word but that, apparently, is not what Patrick takes issue with.

“What? No,” he says, spinning to look at Pete with an irritated twist in his mouth. “ _ Immortal  _ can track that and, well, I mean. You probably shouldn’t have your phone with you, at all, actually.”

Patrick paces, Riot weaving in and out of his legs to keep up, and something weird twists in Pete’s chest. He stands, putting a hand on Patrick’s shoulder to keep him still. “Are you saying they can track us?”

Patrick shakes Pete’s hand away, scowling as he does so. “I’m saying they’re the most technologically advanced company in the world so I wouldn’t put it past them.”

“Right,” Pete steps back, a chill sweeping over him and coalescing in his palm, next to his phone. “You learn that while you were sleep-researching?”

Though Pete means the question genuinely, Patrick’s lips slip into a more amused smile than before.

“Actually, no,” he says. “I was looking up rumors. Ran into your blog, by the way. Interesting stuff coming from a guy who owns a robot.”

“Not by choice,” Pete says quickly. “You said something about rumors? Did you find anything about that?”

“Nothing useful,” Patrick admits. “People have theories that  _ Immortal  _ kidnaps people and can put their consciousness into a machine, making them more lifelike and cheating their way out of coding something that feels real. I guess people have run into missing friends and family members in the form of bots but no one’s said anything about them, like, waking up. Realizing. Either  _ Immortal  _ is great at covering their tracks or I’m the first mistake they’ve made.”

Patrick’s voice feels off and Pete’s too selfish to leave it alone. “Do you know why they took you?”

“Because it wouldn’t make a difference if I went missing,” Patrick says, softening the blow with a shaky sigh. “People might notice but, ultimately, nothing in the world would change.”

Patrick’s voice is tight, controlled, a wire pulled to the point that comes before breaking. Pete feels he could reach out and touch the sound, soothe it and prove to Patrick that he’s wrong.

“Oh,” he says instead, his mind too messy to make thoughts into words. Patrick stiffens but it looks more like a glitch than a reaction. “So did you find out how to fix it?”

“Don’t you think I would have said something if I did?” Patrick asks, giving Pete a withering glare. He shakes his head, looking down at Riot and following her with his eyes as she continues to circle his feet. It’s strange, the blue spotlight glow his eyes places on her, and Pete can’t look away. “I know where the company is. I can confront them about it all.”

“And then what?” Pete asks at the same time he and Patrick look up to meet each other’s gaze. “You get shut off or rebooted? Why don’t you just hand them a screwdriver while you’re at it? Be serious. They won’t hesitate to take you apart and find out what they did wrong.”

“Well, then, what do you suggest?” Patrick asks, stepping towards Pete. Pete stumbles back, breath racing into his throat as he reminds himself that Patrick’s not really a robot. He  takes a moment to speak, staring at Patrick with wide eyes and heavy breaths.

“I know a guy,” he says, at last. The tension in Patrick’s body eases, shoulders falling and eyes going soft. “He’s not quite a friend but I trust him. We met at… at this group thing for people paranoid about bots. He’s more paranoid— more than even I am— but he’s also pretty smart. He studied robot psychology. I think he can help.”

Pete leaves out the part of it being a support group and the part about his friend dismantling robots in his study. He doesn’t mention that his friend hates robots more than he does and, instead, shuts his mouth and pretends he’s not terrified by Patrick’s gentle nod.

“Yeah, okay,” Patrick says. “We should start going now, then. I’d like to get a headstart on  _ Immortal _ ’s goons.”

Bag back over his shoulder and Riot trotting happily behind him, Patrick starts walking in the direction of the city’s transportation center. 

“Do you think they’ll find us?” Pete asks, standing still even as Patrick walks away.

“I think they’re definitely looking for us,” Patrick calls out over his shoulder. “And I don’t imagine that to be a good thing.”

“Right.” Pete lingers behind a second more, his phone hot in his hand despite the coolness of night. 

Patrick faces forward, walking away. Pete thinks of the people looking for him— the siblings and the friends— and circles back to the people he knows in his life.  _ His  _ sister.  _ His  _ mom and dad. 

His mom will try to call him in the morning— or, at the very least, she’ll text. And if he doesn’t answer, she’ll panic. And then what will she do? Go to the police? Call someone for help?

_ Immortal  _ may be hunting him and Patrick but he can’t afford to let that impact his mom. It’s risky but if something happened to her, he doesn’t know what he’d do.

The phone slips into his pocket, thin enough it barely bulges out. 

Patrick turns just as Pete drops his hands back at his side, Pete’s name back on his tongue.

“Pete?” He asks, scratching at that spot behind his ear. “You coming?”

“Yeah,” Pete says, mouth dry and phone heavy. “Yeah, I am.”

~ ~ ~

Though Pete knows no one knows the truth about Patrick, walking into the bus station feels different than it did before. A week or so ago, Pete was stepping off the bus with the thought that nothing could ever change for him; now, in the blue morning haze, Pete doesn’t feel like this moment is part of the life he thought he had.

There’s a woman at the ticket counter with blonde-grey hair, more tired looking than the peppy young man who’d greeted Pete when he first arrived. She’s leaning on one elbow, wrinkles dragging her skin down, and pale blue eyes look up at Pete and Patrick when they walk up with blank grins. Patrick, pretending to be unaware of what’s going on, at least has a reason for his expression. As Pete asks for a ticket to a city hours away, his smile is all due to nerves.

“Would you like someone to take your bot to the truck?” The woman asks, passing over Pete’s ticket with a raised eyebrow in Patrick’s direction. “Technically, we’re at max capacity for that but yours looks small enough that it’ll fit.”

Pete blinks. “Truck?”

“Yeah,” the woman says, still watching Patrick as if suspicious of how tense he’s suddenly gone. “You know, the bot truck? We’ve gotten complaints about robots taking up space and seats so we’ve got a truck for them to go in. It follows the bus and you’ll get your machine back as soon as you’ve reached your destination. No extra charge, either. We just require that you shut the thing off and sign a tag that we’ll stick on it to prove it’s yours when it comes time to collect.”

If Patrick was tense before, he’s gone stone-still now. His blinks and breathing have paused, eyes cast toward the ground as Pete scrambles for words. 

“Oh, uh, no, thanks,” he says, flicking Patrick’s wrist lightly to remind him to breathe. It takes a moment but then the automated rise and fall of his chest begin again, slower and deeper than before. “Wouldn’t want anyone to get in trouble for overdoing capacity.”

“If you’re sure,” the woman says slowly as she looks back at Pete. She goes over the rules of traveling with a robot but Pete barely hears them, too distracted by the regular rhythm of Patrick’s blinks and steady gaze he has on a meaningless spot on the ground.

“Yeah, okay, thanks,” Pete says, cutting the woman off in the middle of a word. “We should probably go wait now.” Tickets in one hand and Patrick’s wrist in another, he walks away.

“You’d think she’d be a bit more concerned about the dog yipping at dust,” Pete mutters once they’re far enough away. “Remember when animals were the things people complained about on public transport? I had a couple of snakes as a kid and you’d think I was the devil with the way some people reacted whenever I brought them to a friend’s place.”

Patrick says nothing and Pete looks at him, eyebrows furrowed and a hand above Patrick’s elbow to bring him to a stop. “Patrick?”

When Patrick still refuses to speak, looking at the ground and still as a skyscraper, Pete’s heart pounds and he tightens his grip on Patrick’s arm.

“Come on, say something,” he snaps, shaking him lightly even as people look on with strange glances. Pete envisions scenarios where Patrick’s reverted back to his robot self, locked away without the chance to return back to who he was; Pete sees scenes of finding out the Patrick he knew never existed at all. His stomach grows cold and he doesn’t know which options worse. “Patrick, I swear to God, I—”

“I’m here,” Patrick says softly, pulling from Pete’s grip but still refusing to meet his gaze. “I’m here.”

Though a tension in Pete’s chest releases at the words, his bones still feel chilled and he fights to keep from snapping. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” Patrick says in that small tone. It sounds wrong for him, lifeless and dulled. “I just… When she called me a robot, it’s like something switched in my mind. I knew I wasn’t what she said but I still felt like I had to listen. Like I needed to do whatever I was told.”

Pete doesn’t care about the way his heart clenches at Patrick’s words. He doesn’t care about how Patrick won’t meet his eyes.

At least, he tells himself he doesn’t.

“Do you know why?” His words are thin, brittle. He cares too much.

When Patrick looks at him, it’s with a twisted scowl and eyes that burn blue. 

“Because I had my life stolen and have no choice,” he snaps. He steps away from Pete, the distance acting like a barrier when he turns around. “Your friend better be amazing at this. I just want this done. I just want to go home.”

Patrick’s words become soft in the last word.

Pete pretends he doesn’t hear.

~ ~ ~

The bus ride is longer than Pete remembers and he spends the first half shifting around to keep his legs from going numb. With Riot in his lap and Patrick squeezed close to his side, though, it doesn’t seem like a viable option. For the fifth time in a row, he tries to switch up the way he’s seated and ends up elbowing Patrick’s side by mistake; for the fifth time in a row, Patrick does nothing. Pete understands that Patrick has to act like a robot, that there are people around with their bots and watchful eyes, but, really, he’s getting tired of the silence.

Some more selfless side of him realizes that it must be worse for Patrick. With his eyes blankly on the floor and his hands resting at his sides— not tangled in Riot’s fur the way they had been before a girl on the other side of the bus looked over strangely— he’s the exact image of the other robots brought in.

Well, except for the fact that he’s not standing. Everyone else is having their robots stand and Pete knows they’re just machines and won’t get tired but, still. It doesn’t seem fair to expect the same from Patrick. 

He glances over at the nearest bot, ignoring the urgent prodding of his pulse against his throat as he takes in the strong curve of metal in the thing’s jaw, the lack of emotion in its dull grey eyes. Is there a human in there, he wonders? Is someone else locked inside? 

For the first time, he doesn’t feel sick because he’s afraid the robot might hurt him— though that thought certainly has his palms sweating and eyes pulling away from it; he’s afraid it’s not a robot, at all. 

As if led by his thoughts alone, Pete’s eyes drag back to Patrick and his thundering heart eases just the smallest bit at the sight of his styled blonde hair, the familiarity of his pink lips. Even if he didn’t know the truth about Patrick, he supposes he’d be proud to have one of the prettier ones.

It’s almost funny, the way he calms at the image of something he knows could kill him if it wants. Even now, with Patrick’s mouth shut and words locked away, Pete seeks comfort in the knowledge that Patrick’s still human. 

It’s this thought, perhaps, that has Pete’s hand twitching towards Patrick, hesitating only for a moment before taking it in his. 

Immediately, his insides recoil from the biting coolness of metal and plastic against his palm, the unnatural press of fake skin brushing against his own. His tongue feels too big for his mouth and he can barely breathe, can barely feel his heart and—

And Patrick gasps. It’s soft and no one hears— no one but Pete.

Patrick’s fingers wrap around Pete’s and Pete doesn’t move his hand away. Instead, he squeezes in a soft pattern— one-two-three, one-two-three. The corner of Patrick’s lip twitches into something that could be a smile, though he keeps his face turned towards the ground. Without uncertainty, he repeats Pete’s pattern back to him.

One-two-three. One-two-three. Perfect precision, respectable rhythm. Pete’s reminded of the yearbook band photos.

One-two-three-four. One-two.

One-two-three-four, Patrick squeezes. One-two.

Pete smiles to himself. A robot couldn’t do this.

One-two. One-two-three. One-two-three-four.

Pete watches his hand tighten around Patrick’s in the pattern, watches the give of Patrick’s skin— no matter how fake— beneath his fingers.

One-two. One-two-three. One-two-three-four.

Pete watches Patrick’s grin grow, a sunrise emerging on a sleeping scene. He watches the curve of Patrick’s mouth, the way he bites his lip as he repeats the pattern back.

Patrick’s never seemed so human before.

~ ~ ~ 

They spend most of the morning on the bus, stopping only for bathroom breaks at sketchy gas stations and rest stops. Pete keeps playing with Patrick’s hand throughout it and, even once they stop, he tightens his grip on Patrick’s hand and pulls him out of the bus with him, lighting up at the chance to finally stretch his legs, Riot racing behind them. Patrick follows, laughing but cutting off short when a tall man collecting his robot from a truck gives him a strange glance. Pete shoots the man a dirty look but otherwise doesn’t engage, eyes set on a certain store in the distance.

“Oh, I know this place,” Patrick says as Pete pulls him through the doors, Pete sighing as they’re hit with cool air-conditioned air. Riot keeps close at their heels, something she’s never done before meeting Patrick. “I had one by my house. I’d buy my headphones there.”

Pete nods, slowing and leading Patrick towards the larger area of the electronics shop, a corner dedicated to bot repairs and additional support. It helps that Patrick keeps talking, standing close enough that only Pete can hear his remarks. Funny— it’s like Patrick’s Pete’s headphones to shut out the other thoughts prodding at his mind as he steps closer to a place that sends his heart racing.

“Are all your memories based around music?” Pete asks, letting out a soft breath when he recognizes shelves of what he’s looking for near the edge of the bot department. So long as everything goes alright, he won’t need to go further in. The places with the bots are out of his sight, something he considers good for both himself and Patrick.

“Well, I mean, they’re all kinda based more on my friends, you know? We were all band geeks but there was some fun stuff in there. Get ice cream and other crap on the weekends. There was this awesome chocolate shop we all loved,” Patrick says, looking away when Pete drops his hand to peruse the shelves. “You know, it kinda sucks. Since I don’t know when I, I guess, became like this, I can’t even remember how long it’s been since I had chocolate. Is it dumb if that makes me a bit sad?” 

Pete frowns to himself. When Patrick says it like that, so softly and so cautiously, it’s as if he can feel the memories, too. As if, through Patrick’s voice, he can reach out and touch the person he once was. The thought leaves a strange sensation in his gut and he shakes it away. 

“I don’t know,” he says quickly, only feeling the smallest bit of guilt at his minimal response. “So, I was thinking we should get you a portable charger. That way we won’t need to worry about stopping to find an outlet. You can pick it out if you’d like. They’ve got some cool designs and shit.”

Pete knows better than to expect elation but Patrick’s grimace is still a more dramatic reaction than he’d been imagining.

“Do I have to?” Patrick asks, sounding so much younger than his robot body looks. “I don’t like charging.”

“Really?” Pete asks, turning to look at him with a raised brow. “I always thought it’d be nice. You don’t have to worry about falling asleep or, like, dying from sleep deprivation. I guess I just imagined it’d be like a reliable recharge.”

This time, Patrick’s eyebrow raises and it’s with no small amount of curiosity. “Do you often imagine life as a robot?”

The words are nothing more than simple musing out loud, Patrick’s eyes as emotionless as glass because, really, that’s all they are. Small glass orbs with paint and lights and, somehow, they still cut straight through Pete.

“No, I just—” Pete cuts off, mouth going dry as he tries to figure out how to say this without feeling it, how to admit it without remembering it. As he tries to piece together why he wants to mention it, at all, while knowing full well that it’s because Patrick merely asked. “A few years ago, when the bots were first coming out, I was… I was attacked by one. It was pretty bad. It took a couple friends to pull it off and, even then, it wasn’t until professionals showed up and shut it down manually that it stopped trying to, like, kill everything in the vicinity. I guess I’ve just become kind of obsessed with robots since then. Unhealthily so.”

“Oh. I see.” Sure enough, Patrick’s eyes twist like cameras refocusing, like emotions trying to make sense of words it can’t define. “Do you know why it did that?”

“The robot? I mean, I, like, I have my theories. You said you saw the blog,” Pete says, wanting nothing more than to look away but Patrick but afraid of what will happen if he does. Those blue lights keep him steady, keep him thinking of something other than flashing lights and hands at his throat. “They said it was just a malfunction but I don’t know. It just seemed so upset. I think that’s what got to me. The fact that everyone says they’re not supposed to have emotions but this one was  _ upset _ .”

“I wonder,” Patrick says, trailing off only to pick back up with a smaller voice than before, blinking slowly at Pete. “I wonder if that one was like me. Human. Someone who woke up one day and didn’t understand where they were. I think it’d be enough to make anyone go insane.”

Pete licks his lips, chapped skin scraping across his tongue. “Yeah, but, like, you didn’t lash out.”

“I was tied up,” Patrick says with a shrug, looking away, at last. It’s not until Pete’s looked away, too, that he says something more. “And part of me just really wanted to trust you.”

Pete’s head doesn’t snap up at that but he feels like it should, like his mind jerked up in shock at Patrick’s words. Though his voice won’t work, though his words won’t make sense, part of him wants to turn to Patrick and say he felt the same way, too.

But Patrick shakes his head and moves past Pete, wrinkling his nose at the rows of chargers presented before him.

“Let’s just get this over with, then,” he says, reaching for a pale orange charger and tossing it to Pete. “If I have to be electrocuted, I guess it can at least be by something that looks like.”

After fumbling to catch the package, Pete glances at Patrick. “So it feels like electricity?”

Patrick turns. Blue lights watch Pete’s face and Pete imagines he can feel their heat, can burn like blood beneath them.

“Yeah,” Patrick says. “It feels like drowning in it.”

~ ~ ~

So Andy’s not exactly an old friend and Patrick’s not exactly the best thing to take to him but Pete leads Patrick and Riot to his front door anyway, knocking with a small cringe at the sound. He sat in a crappy bus for hours for this. He can’t turn back now.

“Okay, so, I feel like I should let you know that my friend doesn’t trust robots,” Pete says in one breath after knocking on the door. Patrick frowns and Pete continues. “Like. He’s an expert in them but that’s only because he hates them. Probably more than even I do.”

Patrick’s eyes— previously narrowed in suspicion— widen in something Pete can only assume is betrayal.

“And you decided to just hand deliver him a robot? Dude, he’s going to kill me,” Patrick says, rambling and pulling at his hair and causing Riot to jump up on his legs in some misguided attempt to calm him down. “If he hates robots more than you do, he’s actually going to kill me.”

Pete winces. “I wasn’t that—”

“You hated me. Absolutely hated me.”

“Is it really worth fighting about?” Pete snaps though his cheeks are warm with shame. “I was just afraid, you know that.”

But Pete also knows that he refused to give Patrick a name, calling him  _ it  _ and  _ that thing  _ and any other insult he could come up with. He knows he sent him on stupid tasks just to get him out of the house. He knows he sincerely contemplated shoving him out a window. 

He knows he tied him up and, even after learning the truth, still hid him away and refused to let him go.

Apologies aren’t easy and, even then, Pete’s not so certain he needs to give one. It’s not like he would have done those things if Patrick had been human from the start. Or, at least, he wouldn’t have done them with so much venom in his voice and heart.

Before he can say anything to ease Patrick’s glare, the door opens and Pete prepares for the worst.

“Pete?” Andy asks, head poking out from behind the door. “What are y—  _ What the fuck?” _

The door opens the rest of the way and Andy rushes outside, a modified taser in his hand and at Patrick’s throat before Pete can blink. Riot barks and tries to bite Andy and Pete picks her up seconds before Andy has the chance to step on her paw. Pete’s heard about the weapons Andy’s been making and he’d rather not have his dog spook him into burning up all of Patrick’s systems. 

“Andy, Andy, calm down,” Pete says, using his Riot voice on him. “It’s fine. He’s fine.”

“He? He’s a robot, asshole. And why else would you bring it here?” Andy asks.

Patrick’s eyes flash and dull, his hands lowering slightly from where he’s raised them in surrender. A reaction to being called a robot like before; a glitch that has him feeling less human than he is.

Pete’s voice hardens. 

“He’s not a robot,” he says. “ _ Immortal  _ did some fucked up shit and, trust me, he’s the victim here. I’ll explain it when we’re inside but, I swear, you need to leave him alone.”

Pete’s words fall on deaf ears and Andy only presses his weapon closer to Patrick’s throat. “I’ve seen what robots do. Why should I trust this one?”

“I’m not asking you to trust this one,” Pete says through gritted teeth. Riot struggles in his arms and Pete has half a mind to set her down and wrestle the taser from Andy himself. “I’m asking you to trust me. Come on, man, you know me. You think I’d trust just any robot?”

This, at last, has Andy blinking and looking at Pete. His eyes search him the way one might look through a word search, detached and certain that just one word must be in there. After moments pass, Andy lowers his arms and nods at Pete.

“Fine,” he says, his eyes still cold. “But don’t expect me to suddenly start liking this thing. You’re gonna have to prove it’ll be safe to bring it in my home.”

Pete’s lungs suddenly fill with oxygen he hadn’t known he was lacking, taking a deep breath after holding it for so long.

“Yeah, yeah, of course,” he says, nodding. “His name’s Patrick and he can tell you everything.”

“You misunderstand. The robot’s not going to be telling me anything,” Andy says. Pete exchanges a look with Patrick, fearful and confused.

“What do you mean?” Pete asks.

Andy turns his taser off but he doesn’t put it away.

“There’s only one way I’m letting you both in this house,” he says. “And that’s if you shut the damn thing off.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wasn't able to edit as much as I'd like. I apologize for any mistakes <3


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is... short. I'm caught up in other things but we should be up to normal length next time. Sorry for that.
> 
> P.s. thank you to everyone who's been reading and commenting!
> 
> Also p.s. edited this in class so maybe not as much attention to detail as there should be. Again, I'm sorry for that

Patrick’s light. It shouldn’t disturb Pete as much as it does.

“You can set him down here,” Andy says, leading Pete down the stairs and into the basement. It’s dark and the stairway is narrow, walls unpainted and seeming to lean in towards them. Pete cradles Patrick closer to his chest, Patrick’s eyes shut and body limp in Pete’s arms. His head rests against Pete’s shoulder, his hair tickling the side of Pete’s neck with each step down. Pete walks casually but his fingers dig into Patrick’s legs and side where he’s holding him. Andy glances back with another distasteful look at Patrick when they reach the bottom but says nothing, turning on the lights with a sigh.

“I don’t come down here much so I guess this will do,” Andy says, leaning back with his arms crossed. “There’s a bedroom you can use if you plan on staying long. The bot can go in the storage area beneath the stairs.” 

Pete nods gratefully and shifts Patrick in his arms, expecting more weight and having to remind himself that Patrick was made to be convenient— lightweight and easy to pack away. It’s a far cry from the smiling boy in the pictures with plump cheeks and soft edges; Pete shakes his head, determined not to think about it.

“Thanks,” he says, waiting for Andy to open the storage door, more darkness and dust greeting them within. Andy stands back as Pete places Patrick inside, awkward and guilty when he sets him on the ground with less grace than he’d aimed for. Patrick’s cheek presses against the tiled floor, hair fanning out around his head and into the dust bunnies around it. His arms and legs curl with uncomfortable angles and Pete wonders whether Patrick would appreciate it if he moved his limbs into something more relaxed.

“You coming?” Andy asks, already turned and heading back upstairs. Pete blinks, hand extended towards Patrick. He pulls back harshly, cheeks warm as he stands. Patrick survived being tied up at Pete’s place; he can handle hiding in a storage area, too.

He follows Andy back up the stairs, flinching when the lights are shut off. If the pinch of fear comes from the thought of robots in the dark, then it’s Patrick in his mind. Patrick, alone in the storage area with eyes gone dull and limbs gone limp. Patrick locked away like the machinery he is.

Patrick. 

Again, Pete forces away from these thoughts and hurries into the living room with Andy, collapsing on the couch and pretending the dimmed lights don’t hurt his eyes. They've let Riot into the backyard and, though Pete can hear her playing around, he misses her comforting presence. Andy's gaze sticks to him. 

“So,” Andy starts, causing Pete to flinch, “I’m going to be a good friend and pretend you haven’t lost your mind.”

“That’s nice, you—” Pete starts only to cut himself off when Andy holds up a finger.

“ _ But  _ that also means I’m going to hold you accountable for this,” he says. “We’ll start with you answering why the fuck there’s a robot in my basement. Are you working for  _ Immortal  _ now? Is that why you moved?”

“Oh, god, no,” Pete says, finally looking at Andy with something like betrayal in his eyes. “You really think I’d do that?”

“No, but I wouldn’t think I’d ever see you defending a bot, either. Forgive me if I’m a bit suspicious,” Andy snaps, eyes and voice cold. Pete’s eyes drop and fall on Andy’s fists. They’re curled tight, the bone of his knuckles straining against the skin just like they were the night he pulled that robot away from Pete.

Looking around, it’s clear Andy’s taken measures against the chance of another attack, using minimal electricity and choosing a neighborhood known for its Anti-Bot community. While Pete focused on overcoming his trauma through therapy sessions and petitions, Andy chose to handle things by preparing against what he calls an inevitable bot takeover. Robot manuals litter his shelves and essays from AI Psychologists scatter across his desks. Wires and old-fashioned electronics like tablets and laptops wait on the floor, evidence of his paranoid testing of weaponry. Andy knows more about robots than anyone else in Pete’s life but that’s only because he’s learning how to kill them.

“Patrick’s not a bot,” Pete says, looking away from what appears to be an early robot eye prototype next to his foot, glass and paint and not much else. “Not really. He’s… he’s human.  _ Immortal  _ captured him and put his mind into this machine version of him. I don’t know how but I think we should help him. He’s as much a victim as I was.”

“I don’t see him in a hospital,” Andy says, still just as bitter as before. “What if it’s a malfunction? What if it’s a trap by the people who made him?”

“The people who made him are trying to get him back,” Pete says, the words sticking to his throat. “Come on, I know it seems impossible but the person he claims to be? He exists. He’s missing. Fuck, if you even just talk to Patrick and—”

“Talk to it?” Andy asks, no longer angered but concerned. He leans forward toward Pete, elbows on his knees and eyes wide. “That’s your proof? Fuck, man, are you even hearing yourself? Don’t forget that you were one who always said bots were made to deceive.”

“I know,” Pete snaps though his words pause. “There’s… There’s more proof than just that.”

Is there?

It’s easy to believe Patrick when they’re alone, when Patrick’s voice is all he can hear. It’s easy to forget how simple it would be for a bot to find a missing kid online; it’d be simple for a bot to pretend to be real. Pete’s heart twists painfully in his chest, pins pressing into his lungs as he thinks of everything he’s done for Patrick so far, every rule of his own he’s broken. 

But he also thinks of the way Patrick held his hand on that bus and of the way he looked when he realized he couldn’t cry. He thinks of how Patrick plays with Riot and how he saved Pete from  _ Immortal _ ’s men when he didn’t have to. He thinks of Patrick asking not to be shut off or charged and how sad he looks each time he says it. He thinks of Patrick’s eyes and how it’s not right for a pair of lights to be so deep.

“I don’t know how to explain it,” Pete says, twisting his hands in his lap. “I just know that I need you to trust me. If there’s even a chance that the Patrick I know is real then… I told him I would help him. And if you can’t do that then I understand but, as your friend, I'm asking for you to consider it.”

Andy’s silent, painfully so, and Pete tries not to fidget beneath the weight of his gaze. The quiet’s only broken by Riot’s happy yips outside then, at last, it’s broken by Andy’s sigh.

“If  _ Immortal  _ is after him then it has to mean something,” he says, rubbing at his temples as if the words pain him. “You two can stay. I still don’t trust this and I sure as hell don’t like it but… You’re right. If there’s a chance that we can save someone, we have to try.”

_ “Fuck _ ,” Pete breathes, muscles relaxing after tensing for what felt like a lifetime. He laughs, breathless. “Thank you.”

“Well,” Andy says, smile wry and eyes flicking towards the basement door. “Don’t thank me yet. We still don't know what _Immortal_ has planned.”

~ ~ ~ 

When there’s nothing more to say and Pete’s tired of Andy’s paranoid looks at the basement door-- looks Pete can't fault him for, looks Pete recognizes as easily as his own face--, Pete excuses himself to the bedroom downstairs. It’s late enough he can get away with wanting sleep but something in Andy’s eyes tells Pete he’s not as good at lying as he thinks. Still, he lets him go.

Pete, however, severely underestimated his ability to feel awkward and uncomfortable, even on his own.

He’s been in the bedroom for a few hours, long enough that he knows he should be craving rest, but he can’t convince himself to relax. The bed’s too big and Riot’s taken to sleeping beneath it rather than on top as she did back at the apartment. The room’s too dark; the room’s too empty. The sheets are heavy and the pillows are stiff and Pete can’t get the thought of Patrick out of his head.

And perhaps that’s what Pete hates most. He has dozens of reasons to complain but, of them all, his mind sticks on Patrick. Alone and locked away… Pete can’t push that image away. There’s something unsettling about knowing he’s near but not knowing more than that. He turns on his side and stares at the bedroom door, wondering whether Patrick’s as uncomfortable as he is. And wondering that feels like trying to make a call but not knowing how, not knowing what number will let him hear the voice he needs. His chest tightens and his muscles tense. 

Again, he wonders whether Patrick’s feeling the same. He wonders if he’d tell Pete if he did.

It’s not quite a surprise to Pete when his feet hit the ground. From the way Riot emerges from beneath the bed and beats him to the door, it’s not a shock to her either.

Pete tries to be quiet as he escapes into the hallway, darkness covering his motions as he presses against the wall and lets it lead him to the stairs, each step shakier than the last. Riot’s better at sneaking around than he is, nose to the ground as if sniffing out Patrick’s presence. It’s unsettling on some level but Pete appreciates the more confident company. 

When he reaches the door, cold from the chill of the basement and shadows, he opens it with a breath held captive in his chest. The latch sticks and the handle creaks as he turns it but, when it swings open, Pete follows Riot inside.

It’s not hard to make out Patrick’s shape as Pete’s eyes adjust to the dark, the curled tension of his limbs and the awkward angle of his neck. He hasn’t moved since Pete set him down hours ago but that, Pete decides, is more disturbing than if he had. He looks more than uncomfortable, more than cold, more than small. He’s barely human and barely a bot, nothing but something trapped and lost in every way. 

“Hey,” Pete says, taking a few tries to get his voice to work right. He bends down and reaches for Patrick’s shoulder, the cool metal that meets his palm failing to stun him the way it should as he offers gentle shakes, Riot helping with her nose and tongue pressing into Patrick’s face. If he didn’t know better, Pete might call the slight flinch from Patrick nothing but a glitch. Patrick’s eyes tighten further and Pete doesn’t know whether to be guilty or endeared. “Hey, it’s just me.”

A moment passes. Then, the blue light fills the room. 

Patrick opens his eyes gradually, his body stretching out as if he’s waking. It starts in his shoulders, soft rolls that travel down to become the unbending of his elbow and the twisting of his wrist, his fingers curling into his palms before reaching out once more. He lifts himself slowly, blinking as the blue light of his eyes burns brighter with each forced breath from his mouth. Pete hears the focus of cameras in the quiet room and he fights back the small shudder that prickles at his skin.

At last, his eyes turn to Pete. “Where’s your friend?”

He sounds bitter and it only serves to bring Pete a comfort he didn’t know he could find in such a tone.

“Asleep, I think,” Pete says, wincing slightly when he hears a sound from upstairs. “Or researching. It doesn’t matter, though, he won’t come down here.”

He doesn’t say that Andy won’t come down because of Patrick but Patrick seems to hear it anyway. He stiffens, looking down at Riot as he scratches her behind the ears.

“Shouldn’t you be in bed, too, then?” He asks. Pete shrugs, feeling useless when Patrick fails to see the action. 

“Couldn’t sleep,” he says. He pauses, debates his next words then says them anyway. “I felt bad. How are you, anyway?”

At this, Patrick looks at Pete, eyes narrowing and lips frowning. 

“I’m alright, I guess.” He hesitates, mouth forming words he won’t say and eyes dropping before looking at Pete once more. “Thanks, you know. For not shutting me off.”

Pete shrugs and, this time, Patrick does see. “You asked me not to.”

Patrick smiles and Pete returns it, the expression shaky but certain as they share it. It settles into Pete’s skin and veins, soaking a gentle kind of joy into his blood that radiates warmth into his chest. Patrick, too, pauses his petting of Riot as his smile grows a fraction of an inch. Something lingers on his tongue, obvious enough that Pete’s eyes drop to watch the twist of his lips and the press of his tongue against them. Pete’s heart pounds without warning and his hands twist into the fabric of the pajamas Andy lent him. Patrick’s lips look soft, inviting. They’re close and they’re pretty and— 

They’re fake. They’re plastic and metal and whatever else  _ Immortal  _ has made. They’re robotic and Pete pulls away.

Patrick blinks and flinches back a second after Pete, hands yanking away from Riot to grab at the hem of his shirt nervously. And, fuck, if that isn’t weird. He’s nothing but a robot and he’s wearing a shirt that probably cost more than Pete’s home, knowing _Immortal_.

Patrick doesn’t need to breathe but his chest heaves anyway, his eyes downcast as the fans in the back of his throat whir. In and out, in and out. Pete mimics the beat.

“It sucks in here,” he says, eyes on Patrick’s hands as they twist together nervously, such a stupidly human act. “You should come back to the bedroom with me. Not for anything weird but… You shouldn't have to be alone.”

Patrick looks at Pete and, though he’s not looking at him, Pete can tell by the sudden lights upon his face. Patrick’s breathing stops, silence fills the room. He’s still. He doesn’t move, doesn’t blink.

When Pete looks back into his eyes, Patrick doesn’t say no.

~ ~ ~ 

The stillness follows them to the room but the silence does not.

Both sitting on the bed with Riot at the foot this time, they both find it difficult to sleep. Patrick because he doesn’t know how he could and Pete because he doesn’t know why he should.

So, they pass the hours by talking. 

It starts simple, conversations about Riot and how Pete knows Andy. The discussion edges dangerously near Pete’s attack but Patrick tells Pete he doesn’t need to say anything about it. So, Pete doesn’t.

Patrick talks about music, the kind he likes and the kind he writes. He smiles softly with each word, gasping dramatically when Pete dares to disagree with any point he makes. Still, that smile of his remains.

A rose-gold shade of sunrise seeps in through the window before it feels like it's been too long, past the curtains and along the wall in shapes that haven’t been named. Pete stares at one such figure as Patrick continues to tell a story about one of his childhood pets, the words fading into nothing but an easy tune.

And then it stops. It takes Pete a moment to notice but, when he does, he looks at Patrick with furrowed brows.

“I’m sorry. I’ve been rambling, like, all night. I should have let you sleep.” If Patrick could blush, Pete’s certain he’d be doing it by now.

“It’s fine,” Pete says. “It’s… It’s nice getting to talk to you.”

The words are meant to be kind and meaningless but Patrick tilts his head to the side, frowning.

“You hate robots,” he says with more certainty than he’s said anything else so far. “Why are you being so nice to me?”

Pete knows he doesn’t have to answer, knows by the way Patrick’s not looking at him now. And he knows he doesn’t need to answer truthfully. He can say that he’s just a good person or that he’s stupid. He can say that it’s the right thing; he can say he’d do it for anyone.

“I’m not sure,” Pete says, glancing away. His words fall into the air gracelessly, mingling together with exhaustion and hesitation between each sound. “I mean, you’re not really a robot, right? It gets more obvious every time we talk. Even in the way you look sometimes, like… Like there’s something real behind your eyes, something more than the glassy look most bots have. In the way you talk and act and… You’re just human. That’s all.”

Patrick’s silent, still. He won’t meet Pete’s eyes.

“What if I’m not, though?”

Pete goes cold, pulling back at Patrick’s words. 

“What?” He asks, hoping he misheard. But Patrick shakes his head.

“I’m scared, Pete. I… I don’t  _ know  _ what’s going on and what if… What if we got this wrong? What if I'm just a glitch?” Patrick’s voice is the line between calm discussion and hurried confession, words quick and terrible that make Pete feel bad for feeling afraid. “I’m scared that Patrick is real but he isn’t me. I’m scared that I was given these memories and made to think I was human. I’m scared that there’ll be no way to fix this.”

“Patrick—” Pete starts but Patrick cuts him off, voice more insistent than before.

“I’m scared of being shut down or shut off and I know that’s selfish because if Patrick is real then I shouldn’t be here. But being shut down isn’t just having everything go dark. I’m… I’m still awake, you know? But it feels like I’m in the dark. Like I can’t move, can’t speak— I’m just stuck in it,” he spits, hands curling into nervous fists. 

“I… I didn’t know that,” Pete says in stilted words. “Fuck, Patrick. I couldn’t even guess that.”

“No, I wouldn’t either,” Patrick says, toying with the sheets now as if to distract himself from his own voice. “I feel like a little kid when it happens, you know? Like I know there’s a monster in the closet or under my bed and it’s just watching me. But I can’t move away from it.”

Pete swallows. “Like something’s watching you? Like—”

“Like  _ Immortal _ , yeah. I- I don’t know if it’s them but what else could it be? They’re watching me and I’m terrified that it means they’ll show up, that they’ll turn me back into a robot and take these memories and—” Patrick’s ranting tone drops into something more afraid, something like an ashamed admission told in nothing but whispers and sighs. “I don’t want to be a robot.”

Pete reaches for Patrick’s hand, stopping halfway and dropping to the space between them instead.

“It’s wrong what you're going through, I know, but—”

“And it’s selfish, right?” Patrick asks, whispers. “To want to be real.”

For once, there is no static in his voice. For once, there’s nothing but him.

Pete takes his hand, holding it as gently as he had when he’d been doing something as simple as fixing his wrist, as squeezing it on the bus; for once, he’s not afraid.

“Can I tell you something now?” Pete breathes, pulling on Patrick’s hand until he looks up to meet his gaze. Blue light burns; cameras focus. “I don’t see a robot when I see you.”

Something brushes over Patrick’s features, soft as silk and hanging to his expression with a desperation Pete feels echoed in the beating of his heart. Patrick’s breaths shudder in and out of his body— in and out and in and out— and he looks like he’d be crying if he could.

“I want that,” he says, words trembling across his lips. “I want to be real.”

“You are real.” Pete’s hand travels to Patrick’s elbow, to his shoulder, to the back of his neck and pulling him close. It’s not an embrace or a caress but it’s something in between, something that brings Patrick’s hands to Pete’s shirt, holding tightly; something that makes them both feel so small, so fragile. “You have to be real.”

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note: I'm a bit worried about this chapter and a decision I made in it but I'll just say that it felt right and that I don't think I want to change it lol. We'll see how it goes over with the readers.

Pete’s half asleep when day settles in, spine curled uncomfortably against the headboard and his head tilted to the side in a failed attempt to rest on his shoulder. His muscles ache in that dull way they do when waking in an awful position, and his limited awareness settles on envying Patrick’s lack of nerves. Patrick, slumped over with his forehead against Pete’s other shoulder as if sleeping, hums in a mechanical tone, streaks of sun warming the colors of his hair. 

Pete’s fingers twitch at his side but he stills himself before making the mistake of shoving Patrick away. Something flutters deep within Pete’s chest— something like fear, something like confusion— and his muscles tense. Breaths catch in his throat when he recognizes the synthetic hairs pressed against his neck, the metal structure beneath Patrick’s skin when his hand taps a gentle beat against Pete’s thigh. Pete knows it’s Patrick but his mind feels something else, something dangerous. 

The feeling in his chest swells, a horrible bubble of acid and nausea when he thinks of the robot pressed against him, the  _ thing  _ touching him. It’s Patrick, he tells himself; it’s  _ Patrick _ . 

It’s a robot, his mind screams back. 

Slowly, Patrick pulls away from Pete. The terror in Pete’s chest remains, even as Patrick looks at him with slowly blinking eyes, a frown twisting into his lips.

“You’re, like, seriously freaking out,” Patrick says as if shocked, head cocked to the side. Can he hear Pete’s erratic heart, feel the way his muscles tense past what’s normal? Are his eyes picking up on the rush of his pulse, draining blood from his face and leaving him pale? Were his hands able to feel the trembling of Pete’s body beneath him?  “Was it a bad dream? Are you okay?”

“I’m—” He can’t speak. Patrick’s eyes scan him further and Pete’s too frozen to shrink away the way his body cries out for him to do.

“Oh. The robot thing. That’s it, isn’t it?” Patrick doesn’t wait for a response, leaning away from Pete even as he holds out his hands. “It’s just me, I promise. I won’t hurt you.”

Pete knows. He fucking  _ knows _ .

But knowing isn’t quite believing. 

“I won’t hurt you. I’m not a robot, not really. Remember?” Patrick asks in a hushed tone as if trying to lure Pete’s more rational side back out. He extends his hand and Pete looks at it, swallowing. “You said I was real last night. That I’m not a robot. So that means I wouldn’t hurt you. Right?”

Pete bites his lip and then lets out a shaky breath. “Right.”

Though he doesn’t know if it’s what Patrick wants, he takes Patrick’s hand and refamiliarizes himself with every inch of it. Palm to palm, fingertip to fingertip, he imagines calluses and fingerprints, stories told on skin and left by life. He thinks of the boy with the drums, the boy with a lighthearted smile. He keeps his eyes away from Patrick’s face, holding onto the image of softer skin and darker hair. 

“I know. You know that, right?” Pete says, at last, his voice low. “That you’re real and that you’re safe, I just… It’s a hard adjustment to make when I’ve spent the past few years certain my gravestone would read ‘death by robot’.”

Pete doesn’t see Patrick’s smile but he hears it in his voice, soft and timid. 

“It’s okay,” he says. “I shouldn’t have been so close. I shouldn’t expect you to just get over something like that. No matter what’s happening on the inside, I’m still a bot. You have a right to be scared.”

“But I’m not,” Pete says, finally looking up to meet Patrick’s eyes. “I’m not scared of  _ you _ , just—”

“Just what I am,” Patrick says, smile falling. “I get it, Pete, really. What happened was awful and, well, I felt how scared you were just a bit ago. Your heart was hammering in your chest and I don’t think you even noticed when you started to hold your breath. You were  _ terrified _ and I understand why.”

“No, you don’t,” Pete says. Patrick scoffs and looks away, trying to pull his hand back. Pete holds onto it, tugging until Patrick’s palm is flat against his chest, resting above his heart. Patrick jerks and looks at Pete, his expression as if he was the one afraid of Pete. “Am I terrified now?”

Patrick shuts his mouth and, for a moment, he’s as still as a robot should be. Eyes on Pete’s and fingers pressed lightly against Pete’s chest.

Pete’s hands fall away from Patrick’s but Patrick keeps his hand at Pete’s chest— feeling, searching, staying.

Slowly, like a decision he’s uncertain of, Patrick curls his hand into Pete’s shirt. His fist is loose and gentle; he’s holding onto Pete as if letting go would cause one of them to fall away.

“No,” he says, looking down. “You’re not.”

Pete smiles, a suggestion to go back to sleep— or charge, in Patrick’s case— resting on the tip of his tongue.

“Do you think it’d be a good idea to—”

“The hell?” Pete’s cut off by the door slamming open, Andy standing in the doorway with a wild look in his eyes. His gaze darts across the room for just a second before landing on Patrick, his mouth fixing into a dark scowl. “ _ You _ . I knew you were trouble. How did you get out? What are you doing?  _ Get away from him.” _

Andy crosses the room, shouting as he rushes towards them. He grabs hold of Patrick’s wrist, tugging him from Pete and tossing him back. Accusations and insults fill the room. Pete doesn’t shake from his stupor until Patrick’s on the ground, blinking in a terrified and confused manner, and Andy’s next to him, grabbing his chin with a scowl.

“You were supposed to be shut off, locked away,” he snaps. “How did you—”

“For fuck’s sake, Andy, let him go,” Pete cuts in, climbing out of bed to shove Andy away from Patrick. “I let him out, okay? If we can agree that he’s human, then we can agree that it’s wrong to keep him locked up like some kind of animal.”

Andy stands, narrowing his eyes at Pete. “We haven’t agreed about that yet.”

“Okay, well, you agreed to help. And this? Isn’t helping,” Pete says, standing between Patrick and Andy. Patrick’s left on the ground, rubbing at his chin, and Pete doesn’t know if he’s hurt, doesn’t know what it feels like to be tossed around in a body that was made to feel nothing. He hesitates, interrupted by his own wondering, but then shakes his head and steps towards Andy. “Just leave him alone, okay?”

“Why do you care so much about him?” Andy asks, arms crossed. 

Pete’s muscles tense. His jaw tightens.

“Just leave him alone,” he repeats, his voice lower and darker than before. He doesn’t grant Andy the chance to respond, doesn’t give himself the chance to consider what other answers ran through his head. Instead, he turns and kneels at Patrick’s side, placing a hand over his chest. 

“Pete?” Both Andy and Patrick ask in wildly opposite tones, though both edge on confusion. Pete shakes his head.

“You’re hot,” he tells Patrick. “You need to charge before you shut down again.”

Patrick scowls and Pete wonders if he really hadn’t noticed or if he’d only been hoping Pete wouldn’t know. Either way, Pete helps him to stand before looking at Andy again.

Andy sighs, letting his arms drop to his side. “I need to look at his programming and software if you want any help figuring this whole thing out.”

“Okay,” Pete says. “You can look at it after he gets a decent charge on him. I’m guessing that’ll be easier for everyone involved?”

Andy almost smiles but it’s more sour than it is genuine.

“Careful,” he says though he pushes past the two to make it to the door. “I still don’t have reason to trust it.”

When Andy slams the door, Pete imagines the room shakes from the force. He stares at the spot where he was, an unreasonable frustration swirling in his gut. He might stare at it forever— could stare at it forever—, stuck in his thoughts as he furrows his brows and tries to pinpoint why Andy’s question has left him feeling so sick.

His staring, however, is interrupted by a gentle exclamation from Patrick.

“Oh,” he says. “There you are.”

Pete turns in time to see Patrick kneeling on the floor, face hidden beneath the bed as he peeks under it. One arm disappears underneath, searching, as he laughs to himself.

“What,” Pete says, all previous questions gone and replaced with something affectionate, “are you doing?”

Patrick looks up with a shy smile. “Your dog. She’s under here.”

Pete blinks, looks at Patrick’s arm still beneath the bed and blinks again. He bites the corner of his lip but Patrick’s self-conscious laugh tells him he doesn’t quite hide the entirety of his amusement.

“Yeah, okay,” Pete says at last. “Why don’t you just leave her be? She can keep you company in here while you charge.”

Patrick sits up, frowning. “Where will you be?”

“Talking with Andy.” Pete extends a hand to Patrick to help him to his feet. “I’ll try to be quick.”

Patrick’s frown deepens and, though he’s clearly upset, it’s a rather endearing look as his bottom lip juts out in a small pout.

“And I assume charging isn’t an actual choice in this,” he says.

“Well, don’t make it sound like I’m forcing it on you,” Pete says, dropping Patrick’s hand, unaware he’d still been holding on. “Better than being shut off, right?”

Pete will always marvel at how Patrick, made of metal and plastic, can make his smile seem so wry. “Right.”

Patrick settles onto the bed again, legs stretched out before him as he leans against the headboard. Pete pulls the portable charger free from where he’d plugged it in last night and turns to Patrick with what he hopes is an encouraging grin.

“At least you won’t be stuck in one place with this,” he says, waving the small charger in his hand. “You’re free to move around.”

“I can’t imagine I’d want to,” Patrick says with a scoff. “Alright, then, let’s get this over with.”

Pete had been expecting Patrick to take the charger and plug it in himself but, instead, he tips his head forward and brushes his hand across the nape of his neck, pulling stray hair away. Though his fingers don’t shake the way they should, Patrick’s eyes shut and he turns his face away.

“Can you do it?” He asks. Pete imagines his voice would be smaller if the minimum volume wasn’t preprogrammed. “I- It hurts and I don’t think I could convince myself…”

“Yeah,” Pete says when Patrick trails off, words hanging in the air by desperate threads. “Of course.”

There’s no reason for his palms to sweat as he stands by Patrick’s side. There’s no logic behind the butterflies in his chest, the warmth across his cheeks, when his fingers meet Patrick’s on the back of his neck, searching for the right place to fit the plug.

Pete focuses on the strangeness of the socket, the synthetic skin giving way to something more electrical than should appear on a human body. If he stares at that then, maybe, he won’t think of how he has one hand on the other side of Patrick’s hip and the other at his neck. He won’t think of how he feels Patrick’s breaths— fake, fake, a fan and nothing more— across his skin. He won’t think of the way Patrick’s biting his lip, prepared to be stung.

Pete focuses on the socket and, yet, he still tries to be gentle when he pushes the charger in.

Patrick gasps sharply, sharper than the spark that lights up the cord connecting to the charger base. Pete follows the wire with his fingers, ignoring Patrick’s overwhelmed breaths.

“You’ll have to hold it,” he says, looking down at the charger in his hands. “Or set it down. The cord’s pretty long so you won’t have to worry about balancing it anywhere but—”

“Give me a moment,” Patrick says. When his words brush against Pete’s cheek, Pete realizes he’s yet to move away. “I can’t think.”

Now, Patrick’s shaking and Pete sets the charger onto the bedside table, mindful not to jerk the cord around. His other hand travels up to Patrick’s face, cupping his cheek as Patrick blinks rapidly, painfully.

“Hey,” he says. “What’s going on?”

“I’m fine,” Patrick says though his fingers twitch as if trying to tear out the wire. “I’m fine.”

“I don’t think so,” Pete says, pulling his hand away and shaking his head. “I’m going to unplug it.”

“Wait, don’t!” Patrick catches Pete’s wrist just as Pete’s leaning back over him, reaching for the cord. His grip tightens and Pete’s too caught up in Patrick’s eyes to feel afraid. “I’d rather deal with this than shutting down. I can put up with it.”

He sounds better now, though he keeps his hold on Pete.

Pete watches him, the white-blue flash of his charging status beneath the darker blue lights of his eyes, and thinks of the boy further beneath even all that.

“You shouldn’t have to,” he says at last. “You shouldn’t have to put up with any of this.”

Patrick’s eyes widen in a comically slow manner, eyelids twitching as he goes against the regulated blinking programming. His lips part and come together and, somehow, Pete already knows Patrick’s going to say his name. 

“No, don’t say anything,” Pete says in a hurry, cutting Patrick off before he begins. “Because I… I never really apologized for the way I treated you. Tying you up and calling you  _ it _ like you hadn’t already proven you were human… It took reading through some damned archived yearbooks for me to even contemplate the idea of accepting it.” Pete and Patrick smile at the same time, the same timid grin.

“You were afraid. I understand.”

Five words simply said in some robotic tone. Any AI could come up with that. Any computer could pretend.

But Pete feels chills across his body as Patrick looks at him. He feels himself fall with no wish to ever stand back up.

“I… I should go talk to Andy now,” he says, tugging lightly to remind Patrick of his grip. They’re in an awkward position, Pete leaning over Patrick, too close to his face, with a hand above his shoulder. Patrick’s caught his wrist with the opposite hand, keeping him in place.

“Right,” Patrick says, letting go. Pete doesn’t move away. “You really think he’ll—”

“He’ll help,” Pete says with more faith than he knew he had. “He has to.”

He has to because Pete hates seeing Patrick cringe whenever he spots a charger. Because his stomach flips and sinks when Patrick talks about being shut off, about being stuck in the dark. Because he can’t keep his mind away from the pictures he saw, the comments he read, the empty space he knows has been carved into this world by Patrick’s disappearance.

Because, as he pulls his hand from Patrick’s shoulder and finds it pressing against his cheek once more, he realizes he can’t stand the thought of him hurting any longer.

Pete means to pull his hand away but, as if it has a mind of its own, it lingers, his thumb pressing against the corner of Patrick’s lips before finally falling back to his side. 

An accident, he tells himself as he clears his throat and looks away. It was an accident.

But Patrick’s looking at him like he knows it’s not.

“Sorry,” Pete says, glancing away. He’s wasted too much time already and Andy’s too suspicious as it is. If he asks him again about why he cares, Pete fears he’ll crack open and never find a way to put the pieces back together. When he imagined breaking at the hands of a bot, it was never like this. “I didn’t mean to—”

“I didn’t feel it,” Patrick says, tapping at his neck. “Electricity. Everywhere.”

“Oh.” That’s not disappointment in Pete’s gut; that’s not relief because there’s nothing to be ashamed of. 

He has his chance to leave now, his chance to step away. His chance to pretend that this never happened, that his thoughts haven’t tangled with feelings he can’t control.

But then Patrick’s reaching for him again, holding his wrist in a grip Pete could pull away from.

Pete doesn’t.

“Can you feel this?” Pete asks, slipping his wrist away from Patrick so that he’s holding his hand instead.

Patrick smiles. “I wouldn’t mind feeling something more.”

Blue lights and that grin; how could Pete resist?

As far as the charging cord will let him go, Patrick lifts his chin towards Pete and— gently, cautiously, fearfully— presses the shyest of kisses against his lips.

For a moment, Pete’s still. He imagines he can hear the buzz and pop of electricity in the background, the artificial pulse of Patrick’s manmade heart. Eyes open, he imagines he can see every screw and stitch that went into making him.

But, then, he shuts his eyes and he imagines the boy from the pictures. Smiling, laughing,  _ real _ .

It’s a kiss that doesn’t know whether it’s certain in its fear or in its want, a rush of both racing into Pete’s essence and mind. Warmth floods Pete’s body and his hand tightens around Patrick’s, flinching twice.

Patrick smiles against his lips. He, too, tightens his hand in a rhythm of two.

Copying, mimicking.  _ Real. _

Though Pete’s heart pounds as if this moment’s been forever, they’ve only just touched when Riot reveals herself from under the bed with a yip that tears them apart. 

“Sorry,” Pete says as he pulls from Patrick, not quite sure what he’s apologizing for. “She needs to go outside, I guess. And I need to talk to Andy.”

“Right.” Patrick steps back. He blinks. “I’m sorry, was that—”

“I need to talk to Andy.”

With Andy, he knows what to say. He knows what to expect. But this? This moment, this feeling? He doesn’t have words for it and trying to figure that out requires admitting what he’s done, admitting what he’s thought.

He thinks of Patrick but he also thinks of that bot from years ago, the one with hands around Pete’s throat and teeth bared as if to attack. He knows there’s a difference—  _ hopes  _ there’s a difference— but the two images collide so suddenly in his mind that his stomach turns and he prepares to be sick.

With Andy, he’ll know what to say. With Patrick, he doesn’t know how. How does he tell him that he cares? How does he tell him why when he doesn’t even know the answer for himself?

Questions for another time. Questions for someone who’s not a bot. 

They’ll figure this out. They’ll get Patrick back into a human body and, then, they can talk.

Pete bends and lifts Riot into his arms, her small body squirming as she points her nose towards Patrick. He pointedly refuses to follow her gaze, to look at him.

“I’ll be back later,” he says. “You stay here and charge.”

~ ~ ~

Talking with Andy isn’t fun but it’s still an escape from whatever was happening downstairs. Pete takes the distraction willingly, no matter the headache it gives him.

“—Area 51 of robot factories. They’re totally testing some wacky shit in that place,” Andy says just as Pete decides to pay attention. Pete pulls his gaze from the window across him— Riot’s currently digging into one of Andy’s bushes— and frowns at Andy.

“I’m sorry, did you just imply that the robots are aliens?” He asks. Andy doesn’t answer, grimacing as he plops Pete’s cup of coffee before him and then takes a seat, effectively blocking the window. Pete takes the coffee with a muttered thank you, warming his hands on the cup. 

He imagines he can burn away how his skin’s calling out for Patrick’s touch, how it seems to have memorized his grip.

“No, I used a metaphor. And aliens aren’t real,” Andy says. “I was talking more about the military activity theory with that place.  _ Immortal  _ is totally doing some shady testing and it’s only a matter of time until they—”

“Makes sense,” Pete says after a quick sip of coffee. It’s bitter but the taste, at least, keeps him awake and aware. “But you know Patrick’s not part of that, right?”  

Andy takes his time responding and Pete spends it wondering whether he choked on Patrick’s name or if he simply felt like he should.

“I don’t know that but, as I said, I do trust you. Somewhat,” Andy says, watching Pete with an unblinking gaze. Pete nearly smiles but it doesn’t stick.

“Well,” he says. “That’s always nice to hear from a friend.”

Andy groans and looks away, arms folded across his chest. “I just need you to understand where I’m at with this. It’s not you, it’s the bot. And I need you to know that I’m serious about what I’m going to do if he turns on us.”

Pete hesitates. He won’t meet Andy’s eyes.

“Shut him off,” he echoes from earlier in the conversation. “For good.”

“Put him down is more what I was going with but, sure, let’s make it sound nice.”

Pete shoves his coffee away, grimacing. “I don’t think there’s any way to make it sound nice. But, hey, you’re calling him a  _ him  _ now so I guess that’s good.”

“ _ Pete _ .”

“Yeah, okay.” Pete goes cold, his jaw tense. “I agree.”

There’s another silence, icy and full of Pete’s last two words.  _ I agree _ — that Andy can destroy Patrick at the first sign of trouble.  _ I agree—  _ that trouble might appear.

Pete wasn’t aware he was agreeing to such things when he said it but it feels too late to renegotiate.

At last, Andy sighs. He stands and shoves away from the table.

“I’ll go get my stuff,” he says. “You go get Patrick. I have a feeling most of the answers will be in his programming so we’ll check the software first. If there’s nothing in that, we can start digging into the hardware.”

Something like exhaustion washes over Pete, a reminder of how he woke and the events that unfolded soon after. Still, he nods.

“Cool,” he says. “Thank you.”

Still, he doesn’t feel quite right.

~ ~ ~

Patrick’s not as charged as Pete had hoped he would be when they come back up, silently climbing the stairs together. They’re slow, Patrick’s hand lightly holding Pete’s arm as he cautiously takes his steps.

Before the last stair, Patrick stops. Though Pete doesn’t want to give into his confusion actions any more than he already has, he turns and watches Patrick as he blinks at the floor.

“I was thinking when I was down there… If this doesn’t work out, thank you, anyway,” he says. “Thanks for trying.”

Pete blinks back at him but turns away, back stiff as he continues the walk up.

“Let’s save that for after Andy fixes you.”

Patrick’s silent for the rest of the walk, head ducked down as Pete tries his best to introduce him to Andy. This time, he does stumble over Patrick’s name; he blames it on Andy’s curious gaze at the way Patrick’s hand remains wrapped around Pete’s arm.

Andy has Patrick sit at the table, computers and wired contraptions resting before him. They hum like music when Andy turns them all on, connecting Patrick to a laptop through a cord that he shoves forcefully into the back of his neck. Patrick flinches but says nothing, hands folded into fists in his lap.

“I’m just gonna scan everything first,” Andy says. “If I catch any spyware, you’re out.”

“Sounds fair,” Patrick says after a beat. Andy raises an eyebrow at him, jerking slightly at the sound of his voice. Like Pete, he says nothing.

But, unlike Pete, he has a screen to hide behind and a job to do. Pete leans against the wall and keeps his gaze on Patrick, watching him until he feels dizzy from staring at those lights in his eyes.

After a moment, Andy sighs and pulls away from the screen, looking at Patrick with less hostility than before. He grabs something like a phone and holds it to Patrick’s lips.

“While that’s finishing up, I want you to say something again. We can run some tests on the vocals, make sure you are who you say you are,” he explains. Patrick frowns.

“How would that do anything?” He asks. Andy lifts a corner of his mouth in a condescending grin and taps the side of his computer screen.

“Patrick Stump, right? Some kid from Chicago in some bands? That guy’s got videos out there. They’re poor quality, sure, but they’ll get the job done.” He clicks the recorder on, watching Patrick intensely. “Now speak.” 

“I—” Patrick looks at Pete with furrowed brows and Pete thinks back to some old movie he watched once, something with a mermaid selling her voice to a witch for a different body. It’s no comparison but he sees that in Patrick now, the mix of loss and hope within his entire being as he waits for proof that he can be something more than what he appears now. “I don’t—”

“Tell him about Riot,” Pete cuts in, earning a hard glare from Andy. “Talk about how you two play.”

And just like that, Patrick lights up.

“Well, we don’t really play but she likes to be carried and it looks like playing when she jumps up on me. I’m not usually too good with dogs but she’s so easy to pick up,” he says with a small laugh. “I think it’s because I always had bigger dogs growing up— or, at least, they seemed big. My dad got a smaller one a bit ago but I haven’t had the chance to see her yet. That was a while back… I was supposed to visit and—”

“That’s enough.” Andy turns the recorder off and sets it aside. Pete doesn’t know whether Andy had caught onto the way Patrick’s smile was dropping or the direction the story was going but, either way, he’s grateful it didn’t have to continue. “I’ll run that with the audio from these videos tonight. Once I pull the robotic overtones from your current vocals, we should be able to see how well they match up.”

Pete glances over Andy’s shoulder just as he’s shutting out a window with a grainy video thumbnail, something that looks like a red-faced Patrick and an oversized mic. He smiles against his will, wondering how harshly Andy will judge him if he asks to see it later.

“Did the scans finish?” Patrick asks, leaning forward slightly in his chair. Andy’s head bobs in a subtle nod and he runs through files too intricate for Pete to try to understand.

“It’ll take me a while to go through all of them but, for now, I don’t see anything malicious,” he says. Still, he frowns and clicks through each folder, chewing on his lip. “Hey, are you aware that you’re missing a tracker? I was going to try to shut that off but it seems as if  _ Immortal  _ already did that.”

“No, I did,” Patrick says, poking his own cheek to indicate where it was. “It was originally implanted in one of my back teeth. It was some trouble and no fun but I got it out before leaving Pete’s place. Freaked the hell out of the dog, I think.”

Pete doesn’t know how he knows, but Patrick’s voice is shaking. Pete doesn’t know how he knows, but Patrick’s smile isn’t as real as it could be.

Pete shuts his eyes before Patrick can look at him, the way he knows Patrick will.

“You took it out yourself?” Andy asks, almost sounding impressed. “No problem?”

“I figured it was a good idea and it’s not the worst that’s happened. I got in a sledding accident years ago and I’ve had a chipped tooth ever since. Now,  _ that  _ sucked.” 

More shaking words. More details for the Patrick in Pete’s head.

“Huh,” Andy says. Then, “Good job.”

Pete doesn’t know if they keep talking or if he’s simply slid away into that place in his mind that’s only the darkness and him. A place where he hears only echoes of his own thoughts, his voice as if through a door, and he sinks into it, waiting.

Chipped teeth and red cheeks. Someone took that away. Full smiles and a head of dreams. Someone decided the world was better without.

God, Pete hopes this works.

He waits in that place in his mind, accompanied by the steady clicking of Andy’s fingers across his laptop keys as he runs tests and scans that Pete only half understands. This one to check for back up trackers; another one to see the sale date. He only says what tests he’s running but he doesn’t give the answers. Somehow, Pete’s grateful he doesn’t.

“Alright,” Andy finally says in a voice that has Pete opening his eyes. “I’ve downloaded a few files that will take longer to dissect but I do have some information for you. I don’t know how much it will help.” He says the last part looking over his shoulder at Pete, his eyes emphasizing his words.

Pete looks back with a blank look of his own. “What is it?”

Andy sighs and turns back to Patrick, and Pete follows his gaze. Patrick seems more comfortable now that the computer cord’s been taken from his neck but he still holds his breath when Andy twists the computer screen to show him what he’s found.

“From my understanding, you’re 80% bot. Every part of you that we can see was made in a factory and put together. The other parts, things like your connection to the internet or your charging status, were programmed. Everything from your available vocabulary down to the expressions you’re able to make—  that was all done by  _ Immortal _ ,” he says.

The only reaction Patrick gives is a whoosh of breath freeing itself from his throat, a sad sound that has his shoulders slouching. Pete hates how he wonders whether that was all programmed, too.

“And everything else?” Patrick asks, his voice monotonous.

Andy sighs and then reaches over, pressing his fingers to behind Patrick’s right ear.

“Here,” he says. “It’s all here. It seems like there’s an unnamed chip implanted behind your ear, connected to the main system, and it has… everything else. Memory files, vocal records, emotional programming… Anything that is  _ Patrick  _ is here. Patrick’s in here.”

Pete can’t see Patrick’s face when Andy’s leaning forward but he can see the way his fists tighten further, the way every bit of him goes still. When Andy pulls back, Pete doesn’t know whether he was afraid for Andy or hurting for Patrick.

Patrick doesn’t speak.

“Okay, then. You run some tests on that file and get back to us, alright? I think that’s enough for today,” Pete says when the silence begins to swell. Andy nods and starts packing up as if the idea was his all along, casting strange glances Patrick’s way as he prepares to leave.

“I’ll be in my office. I have most of it on a hard drive so I’ll come get you with any breakthroughs,” he says. Pete nods and Andy leaves.

He leaves nothing but quiet in his wake.

Pete’s almost terrified to walk towards Patrick but not because of any of Andy’s revelations. It’s because he’s never seen Patrick so still before.

“Patrick,” he says, saying his name as it to snap both of them from this stupor. “You okay?”

Patrick— slowly, softly— looks at Pete. He doesn’t look broken; he doesn’t look much like anything.

“Yeah,” he says and Pete’s thinking of what Andy said— of available vocabulary— and he wonders how  _ Immortal  _ made that list. “I just—”

“Yeah?” Pete asks, not thinking of what his vocabulary as a robot would be limited to.

Patrick looks away. “I wish he had told me how to sleep.” 

There’s more on Patrick’s tongue; Pete can see it and Patrick’s mouth twists as if he can taste it.

Pete extends a hand towards Patrick, helping him to his feet.

As they walk back into the basement, they exchange no words.

~ ~ ~

Patrick beats Pete to the bedroom but only because Pete stopped to bring Riot in— half because she’s been outside long enough and half because he hopes she can calm Patrick down. But when Pete enters the room after Patrick, Patrick’s plugged himself back into the charger, biting down hard on his lip as he curls into a ball on the bed.

Eyes shut and lips parted to measure shaking breaths, it’s an expression Pete’s more than familiar with.

“Hey,” he says, setting Riot on the floor before joining Patrick on the bed. He takes the other side, careful not to move too close. “It’s all good news, right? We know where your information is stored so we should be able to get you out of there.”

Patrick’s quiet, though his eyes open and stare blankly at the wall. His breaths pause and, when he does speak, it’s in a low tone.

“Are we sure that’s me?” He asks. “Or are those just someone else’s memories? What if it’s all programming? What if they took this person’s mind and killed him? What if this is all useless?”

_ What if? What if? What if? _

Pete knows the answer and he doesn’t like it one bit.

_ What if this is a trick? What if Patrick’s gone? _

_ What if they’re doing this for nothing? _

It’s exactly that— they’d be doing this for nothing.

He shivers and can’t help the way his eyes fall from Patrick, pinning to a stitch on the blanket beneath them. Sure, he can say he’s doing this for Patrick but he knows, as Andy and Patrick must know, that he’d never do this if he knew that this Patrick was nothing but wires and programmed thoughts.

He’d never do this for just a bot.

“Don’t think about it,” Pete says, though his voice is soft enough he may as well be speaking to himself— Patrick’s robotic ears be damned. “There’s a chance and that’s all that matters. Or would you rather we stop here? Do you want that? Do you want to never know the truth?”

Patrick’s glance is a troublesome weight and Pete grows hot beneath its touch. He’s still, unmoving, and all he can do is flick his eyes back to Patrick’s.

Patrick’s blue lights; Patrick’s seeking gaze.

“If we did know the truth and if it turned out that I was a bot, what would you do?” Patrick asks, sitting up. “Would you still let me kiss you?”

“I said not to think about it,” Pete answers before he’s fully realized the question, before he can give himself permission to think of the answer. Patrick’s face falls, fractionally, and Pete sighs. “God, what does it matter?”

“It matters to me.”

Of course it does.

Pete sighs again, softer this time, and turns towards Patrick with no more words on his tongue. He thinks of how it felt when Patrick had pressed their lips together— as shy as children, as soft as light— and wonders what it means that he hadn’t panicked until after. His stomach had twisted but it wasn’t in fear; his mind had gone blank but it wasn’t in terror.

Surely, a robot could never do that.

When Pete’s close enough, he cups the back of Patrick’s head in his hand and pulls him forward, hair tangling between his fingers and ticking his palm.

“We’ll figure it out,” Pete says softly. He shuts his eyes— so he doesn’t have to see, so he doesn’t have to think— and leans to give a kiss to the side of Patrick’s face, just off from where the chip is supposed to be. When he pulls away and opens his eyes, Patrick’s wearing a face as if he should be blushing. It’s enough to calm Pete’s fidgety nerves. “I know you can’t sleep but it might still be a good idea to rest. Close your eyes and think of how nice it will all be when this is over.”

“When I get the chance, I’m going to show you the record shop I work at,” Patrick says, eyes half closed and lips half smiling. “I’ll think of that.”

When Patrick rests back against the pillows, Pete knows he isn’t sleeping and, yet, he watches with a strange fascination anyway. Heart thrumming softly in his chest, he forces himself to leave the room before doing something stupid like brushing the hair from Patrick’s face or thinking of what it would be like to see where he works.

He sneaks upstairs with a weight in his gut, his tongue between his teeth. He prods at his back tooth with a frown. 

Patrick tore a tracker out of his body before leaving. And Pete’s phone is still in his pocket.

He has his excuses; he has his reasons. The app to tell him about Patrick’s systems, and all the comments from Patrick’s friends. The fact that his mom must be panicking, or the fear that all of this is wrong.

He has his excuses. None of them feel fair.

When he reaches the backyard, Pete tosses his phone to the ground, picking it up and repeating the action until the screen is shattered and the edges are cracked. His hands shake and a shout lodges in the back of his throat, something violent to match the guilt he feels.

Beneath it all, as he slams it to the ground, again and again, he fights back the worry that this show of loyalty— this picking of sides— is happening too late.

~ ~ ~

That night— in the dark, beneath covers hiding both him and Patrick on separate sides of the bed— Pete wakes to a certain sound. Before his eyes have opened, he already knows what it is.

Patrick’s struggling against his charger.

It shakes Pete back to a night that can’t be more than a week or so ago, a night of horror and discovery— a night that led them here. Like that night, his insides go cold and twist against each other. This, though, fades when he hears Patrick’s voice saying his name.

“Pete,” he says in a soft whisper. “Pete, Pete, please, I can’t, Pete—”

Eyes still mostly closed, Pete rolls over and tosses his arm out towards Patrick. He expects to feel the heat of a charging cord hit his palm, a wire to pull free from Patrick. He doesn’t know the full extent of charging pains but, he assumes, it must be worse if Patrick’s fully charged and is still being force fed electricity.

He moves to unplug him but Patrick goes still before Pete can.

This is something new, and Pete’s heart stutters to a stop at the sudden silence settling among them.

“Patrick,” he says, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. “Are you okay?”

Blue lights flash at him.

Patrick’s not looking at him.

There’s something different about his gaze when Pete meets it— something nearly empty as he looks as if he’s nothing but glass. Pete backs away slowly, heart in his throat as he turns the lamp on.

“Patrick?” He asks again, this time more uncertain than before. He doesn’t know what’s wrong but something in his gut as him pulling towards the edge of the bed, preparing to run. “What’s wrong?”

Pete’s head spins as Patrick refuses to respond, blinking and blinking— every few seconds, never missing a beat. Then, with actions as certain as the stillness of his chest, he reaches back and tears the charger out.

Blue and yellow sparks flash from the violent motion and Pete finally pulls himself from the bed, standing on shaking legs as Patrick, too, stands and walks near him.

“Patrick,” Pete tries again, hands held out and breath caught in his throat like a knife prepared to tear. “Patrick, come on, calm down.”

He backs towards the door, hoping for a chance to run. Andy’s tests must have done something to him— shut him back into robot mood, filed away the Patrick he knows. That’s it, that’s all it is. Pete shakes but he convinces himself this is nothing but another irrational fear.

And then he hears Andy shouting upstairs.

“I already told you!” Andy snaps, voice muffled by the distance. “There’s no robot here. There’s no one here but me. I don’t care what company you work for, this is highly—”

Company. Pete’s stomach sinks through the floor. 

“P—” He can’t bring himself to speak, suddenly stilled by fear. “Ple—”

Patrick’s not large but he’s terrifying in this room, standing before Pete with a hollow look in his eyes. The way he looked when Pete first met him, back in that robotic state. 

“Patrick, stop!” Pete shouts when Patrick reaches for him, hands outstretched for his neck and, god, Pete can’t do this again, won’t do this again. Andy’s upstairs, yelling and fighting, and Pete barely feels Patrick’s wrist beneath his hands as he tries to keep him away from his neck. “Patrick, please!”

Metal hands around his throat, pushing past his struggles with no more difficulty than wind brushing through leaves. Tighter and tighter, those blue lights like demons as they watch without really seeing.

“Patrick…” Those aren’t tears in Pete’s eyes and that’s not a sob on his lips. It’s nothing but fright and alarm setting in, blurring his vision; it’s nothing but his breath stealing away as Patrick’s hands hold stronger still. “Patr—”

His vision swims. The room spins.

The door slams open and the last thing Pete sees is the horrible gold coloring of  Immortal's __ logo taunting him like a laugh he’ll never forget.

Patrick's hands tighten. Pete’s lungs burn.

And then there’s nothing more.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is rather late and rather unedited... I'm working on a few future fics that have deadlines so I apologize for both, as well as any future delays

Darkness. Silence. Pete wakes to both with an unsettling hope that everything up until now has just been a dream. He wakes with his heart in his throat, his nightmares in his chest, and his neverending fear of the unknown in his head. He wakes with an ache behind his eyes and a ring of pain around his throat, with harsh coldness beneath him and the weight of his memories atop him.

When he sits up, swaying and sick, lights flicker on with a buzzing sound— too bright, too soon. When he looks around, he sees he’s in a cell.

More or less a cell, anyway. The four walls around him are an annoying shade of silver, burning his eyes where the lights flash against the sheen, and the floor is made up of tiles in small black and white patterns. His bed is the least decorative thing in the room and it’s not much of a bed at all, simply a slab of metal sticking out from the wall across the door.

And the door, of course, is the most intimidating part of it all. It’s the same color as the walls but stands out due to the small window in the upper center, a thick pane of glass showing nothing but a dim hallway outside. Pete tries to see through it from his seat on the bed but eventually gives up, standing and stumbling towards it.

“Hello?” He calls out, voice weak and breaking off into a cough. He clears his throat despite the pain, hand pressing against his neck with a wince. Once again, he tries to speak but even the first breath has him doubling over, choking on it. The door’s a cool surface as he leans his forehead against it, eyes shut. “Hello?”

The voices he hears aren’t in response but they are enough to have him leaning closer, ear pressed nearly against the door to catch any word he can. There aren’t many—  _ running tests, set up properly, put the bot away—  _ but the few he does hear don’t sound good. Heaps of noise follow the voices, dull thuds and muted scrapes across the floor, and Pete can’t decide whether or not he wants to try to make sense of it. He backs away, breaths shallow and waits.

Finally, after his limbs have gone stiff from standing and his vision has gained blurred spots from staring, the door opens with a click loud enough to make him wince.

The man who enters is tall, dark-haired with a suit to match. His hair’s on the longer side, tied back to properly show off his pasted on smile. Two other men flank him, bodies larger and faces blank. They stare straight ahead and the dimmed glow of their eyes completes the inhuman look about them.

“Peter,” the man says at last. “I’m Shawn. Pleased to meet you, though I do wish it could be under simpler circumstances.”

“Simpler,” Pete repeats, blinking away from the eerie eyes of Shawn’s bodyguards. “I’m at  _ Immortal.” _

Shawn’s smile, framed by a groomed beard, fails to hesitate before growing. “Well, yes. Would you expect anything else?”

“I don’t know what to expect,” Pete snaps. Only the sight of the bots has him holding back, muscles tense and fists clenched. His eyes dart back and forth between them, Shawn’s grin flashing in the middle. “I woke up as your prisoner. My perception of reality has kind of stopped there.”

“And not when you found out about Patrick?” Shawn asked, raising a perfectly groomed eyebrow. Pete keeps silent, tongue fitting between his teeth. “I’m sorry. You weren’t supposed to know about that.”

“You say it like it’s such a small thing,” Pete says. “That’s someone’s life you’re talking about.”

“Not really,” Shawn says with a small shrug. “Though, I suppose I can see how you’d see it that way.”

Pete does not go cold at those words. He does not pause and reconsider everything he believes. He does not think of Patrick and his fears of just being a bot, of his worries that everything he thinks is fake. He doesn’t do any of this— or, at least, he pretends he doesn’t.

“Explain,” he says, voice flat. “Explain Patrick.”

“PK-84.” Shawn’s smile is an insult, a slimy pile of filth stacked upon his face. “The robot, right?”

“No, the person,” Pete says, ignoring the shake in his own voice. “Is there a real Patrick?”

Shawn considers Pete’s words but then nods, leaning back against the door.

“Sure, I guess. Patrick Stump is real but PK-84 isn’t him. That’s just the latest in our AI experiments— a bot based on the  _ real  _ human experience.” Each word is carefully chosen to deconstruct all of Pete’s reality, to destroy each second of hope he’d felt these past few days. He wants Shawn to stop but his mouth has gone dry and he doesn’t know if he’d be able to find the right words to make this end. “The real Patrick— the human Patrick— was just a college kid looking for a few bucks. He agreed to take part in our experiment and had all his memories, all his thoughts, copied onto a chip. The same chip I’m sure you found behind PK-84’s ear.”

“I hate how know-it-all you’re acting,” Pete says. Just as he hates how this echoes his own fears, Patrick’s own fears. Just as he hates how easy it would be to believe this; the way he doesn’t know whether or not he wants to believe this. “You said it was just his memories and thoughts but PK… But Patrick seems to be pretty sure he’s, well,  _ Patrick _ .”

“An unexpected consequence, yes. You see, all of Patrick is in that chip but the bot is only supposed to be able to access portions of it. It’s supposed to form his traits— traits that only certain experiences can truly create— but it’s not supposed to access any thoughts. Certainly not any memories.” Shawn reaches into his jacket and pulls out a folded piece of paper, unwrinkled and covered in small printed ink. “I brought his contract to show that he consented to all of it. Here, look. I don’t mind.”

Pete only takes the contract because he feels he has no choice, two bots watching him and Shawn still smiling. He doesn’t bother reading the actual terms or agreements but his vision lingers on the loopy signature at the bottom. A big P trailing off into scribbling, an S caught somewhere near the end. Pete runs his finger over it, the small dent from the pen pressing back against him. 

Patrick signed this, held this— the  _ real  _ Patrick. Pete’s throat tightens and his skin crawls all at once. It’s strange, he thinks. Perhaps it’s all true, perhaps some Patrick out there decided his thoughts were worth whatever check they passed his way. Some Patrick gave away his identity, not quite caring about what they did with it.

Not quite caring about the Patrick they could create and hurt in return. PK-84, the bot Patrick, the fake Patrick.

Pete’s Patrick. 

“You know, I know you, Pete,” Shawn says as Pete continues staring at the signature. “You caused trouble quite a bit ago, correct? You were the big robot protestor back when  _ Immortal  _ was really just starting out. Hero for the real humans, right?”

“Pretty sure I never called myself that,” Pete says, tossing the signature back at Shawn before it burns him. His viewpoint was always more doomsday than that, certain bots were nothing but dangerous. He’s not so sure he’d have the same views now. The bots don't seem to be the ones with malicious intent.

“Whatever. What matters is that one of our bots attacked you— and I am sorry for that. Another experiment like this— a human mind in a metal machine. It was one of our first attempts but I see some things never change. Bots wake up and think they’re human and that, Pete, makes them dangerous.” Shawn says it like it’s all so simple, like he’s not talking of robotic hands around Pete’s throat or bright blue eyes in his sight. “I’m sorry you had to deal with another one. We’d like to compensate you for your troubles. We can offer quite the sum if you’d like. Send you off and never bother you again.”

Shawn seems a second away from writing the check out now, patting Pete on the back and watching him leave. And it’s an attractive offer— Pete thinks of his mother, his friends, his life. He could say any number he wants and he has no doubt  _ Immortal  _ would give it to him.

But…

“You want me to shut up, that’s it. Pay me for a promise that no one finds out about it. Hand to my heart, gun to my head,” Pete says, taking a half step back. “You want to pretend none of this ever happened.”

Shawn may be a robot himself, his smile forever unwavering. “Don’t you want to do the same?”

Of course. Pete wants to rewind back before that night Patrick woke up, shaking and jerking and crying out. He wants to hold his dog— gone, now, ran away or stolen— and stay in bed rather than entertain stupid ideas like what Patrick said. Before the promise that he’s real, the reassurances that they’d figure this out. 

But he also knows that what he wants is something next to impossible. He can’t have the memory of Patrick’s eyes if he gives up the moment he first truly opened them. He can’t keep the thought of his voice if he forgets what he said.

He can’t keep the feeling of Patrick’s kiss if he doesn’t know what it means to have it.

“What’s going to happen once I’m gone?” He asks. 

“Nothing that’s not already happening. We fix the bot and send it off to a new owner,” Shawn says. “The only difference is that you walk out of here much richer than you are now.”

“I won’t take your money,” Pete says, more certainly than he’s said anything else today. “I want to see Patrick. The real Patrick. I want proof that no one’s being hurt, that Patrick’s not hurt. Then, I’ll leave.”

Shawn’s eyes darken, narrow. It’s only a fraction but Pete swears he sees his smile flicker.

“I’m afraid we can’t do that,” he says. 

Pete smirks back. “Then I’m afraid I can’t take your deal.”

When Shawn leaves, no more words exchanged between them, it’s with an air of defeat behind him. It’s with the weight of his lies fading from Pete’s shoulders.

Patrick is real but not in the way Shawn was trying to sell him. He was tricked, hurt, stolen. 

And Shawn can't keep that lie alive if he can't produce proof of Patrick's safety.

The door clicks shut and Pete doesn’t think of what comes next or how to get there.

He’s left alone and he thinks only of when he’ll next see Patrick, of how certain he is that the moment’s not far.

He thinks of how he’ll kiss him on the mouth and keep any fears from ever coming out again.

He thinks of Patrick. And he knows he’s real in a way he’ll never doubt again.

~ ~ ~

Pete refuses to call the place he’s stuck in a prison. It’s more of a deja vu, the same day repeating each time he wakes up. Lights turn on when he sits and food is brought in within the first few hours of him hitting the door, shouting for release. Every so often, he hears voices echoing down the halls towards him; he sees robots and engineers leading them to other rooms.

And always, always, Shawn and his bots come in.

Standing in the doorway like a doctor offering a cure or a preacher promising salvation, he asks for Pete to take the deal. 

And always, always, Pete says no. 

“Someone’s going to track the whole story down eventually,” Pete says on what must be the tenth day. “I’m not that much of a loner and I didn’t exactly leave inconspicuously. People will figure it out.”

The look Shawn gives him is pitying at best, withering at worst.

“Peter,” he says, having given up on familiar terms on day four. “We’re a company based on AI. Do you think we wouldn’t be able to fake your existence, too? The second you spoke in this room, we had your voice on record. A few phone calls through a modulator, a couple updates on your social media, and people have given up their concerns. You have no threats, no power.”

“You can’t keep me here forever,” Pete snaps, the same thing he’s been saying every day.

And, just like every day, Shawn sighs and makes his way back outside.

“We can keep you alive online,” Shawn says as he leaves. “And as long as we have that, we can have you.”

He says it with a confidence Pete hates to believe, a certainty that rings as true as funeral tolls. The one saving grace is the way he leaves right after, the way he doesn’t watch Pete’s face fall as he goes.

It’s on the twelfth day that Pete sees someone else. Hands flat against the door, face pressed close to the window, he peers out and catches sight of light blond hair.

“Patrick.” The name leaves his throat in a helpless whisper, his voice bandaged and blessed by the very image of Patrick’s bright blue eyes and pale pink lips. He’s facing the side, walking down one of the halls intersecting the one directly before Pete, and a handful of engineers follow with tablets and clipboards in their hands. 

Slowly. Patrick walks so slowly. Pete pretends it’s because he knows how close Pete is.

“Patrick!” Pete cries the name this time, slamming his hands against the door and kicking the base. His head hurts from the sudden sound but he continues to shout, his voice echoing back against him. “Patrick, over here!”

As slowly as he walks, Patrick stops. Jerking motions traveling down his body in waves, in a system of cause and effect. The engineers halt, too, but Pete pays them little mind as his breath stills in his throat. He doesn’t see them, not really; he only wants to see Patrick.

But Patrick looks at Pete the way he used to look at everything. Empty. Hollow. The dead eyes watching from the back of a hearse. 

He watches Pete with no recognition, no familiarity, for no more than a second. 

When Pete finds the desire to breathe again, Patrick’s already disappeared down the rest of the hall.

~ ~ ~

The next days don’t matter. Not when Shawn comes in to offer his deal; not when Patrick continues his ghostly walks down the corridors to some unnamed lab. Pete stares blankly at the wall whenever anything happens, his voice trapped beneath the sudden weight of his lungs.

“You saw Patrick again,” Shawn likes to say. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

And fuck him, Pete likes to think. That’s not his Patrick.

That was never Patrick.

~ ~ ~

On the sixteenth day, things matter again. And they only matter because, now, Pete has a compromise.

Shawn comes in around his usual time— after someone’s cleared Pete’s dinner away and escorted him back and forth from a nearby restroom. Two bots at his side, a smirk on his face; Pete’s used to all of it.

“Have you thought about it any differently?” Shawn asks, hands folded neatly behind his back. “Would you like to take my deal?”

“No,” Pete says and there’s no shock in the room. Not until he adds on with, “Not that one.”

It’s three more words than he’s given the past few days, three more syllables that have Shawn raising an eyebrow and the corner of his lips. “Oh? And what would  _ you  _ have in mind?”

“Patrick,” Pete says, shoulders back and chin raised. He’s whispered the name to himself often enough that he can say it now without choking. “In exchange for my silence, you give me Patrick.”

The name lingers in the air with every implication underneath, wires buzzing and sparks flying. Shawn doesn’t react but, really, Pete doesn’t expect him to. All that matters is that he understands what Pete wants: Patrick, the robot.

“PK-84.” Shawn says it with the same skepticism Pete had expected, the slightly narrowed eyes and tilted head. “I hate to tell you this, Peter, but we’ve already reprogrammed him. Found the glitch and turned him back into a bot. He won’t remember you. He won’t remember anything.”

“I know. It doesn’t matter, I just want him around,” Pete says, quicker than he had intended to. Still, Shawn tilts his head further, eyes widening at Pete’s words. “Come on, what’s the risk? If you’ve really fixed him then you have nothing to worry about. He’ll just be a bot and I’ll be someone with a stupid story I can’t prove. Or do you think he’ll be able to beat your system again?”

Shawn takes his time answering, lips drawn into a thin line as Pete’s words fill the air. As unblinking as the bots beside him, he stares.

It feels like years before he speaks again, his voice as careful as his eyes. 

“Very well,” he says. “I’ll have them bring him in.”

He disappears through the door, his bots remaining in place with their blank gazes caught on Pete. Pete keeps still, breaths thin and throat tight when the lock on the door clicks back in place.

One minute. Two. Pete counts each second like a heartbeat that may falter at any moment, like a pulse not strong enough to fight on its own.

Three minutes. Four. It’s the smallest amount of time, barely enough to count as time at all, but Pete still can’t help his own alarm as he stares at the door and waits.

Five minutes. Six—

The door opens. Shawn steps in.

A handful of engineers follow close behind him, a semi-circle of white coats and clipboards like a science fiction film gone wrong. They’re all silent for the most part, the softest of murmurs existing between them. They all watch Shawn with trepidation in their eyes, hesitation in their motions, and Pete stares back with his own brand of terror.

Breath in his throat, hands shaking at his side.

Shawn steps to the side.

And bright blue lights greet Pete’s vision.

Pete gasps without meaning to, a violent sound he nearly chokes on as his limbs jerk with the need to run forward, to take Patrick in his arms and apologize for letting this happen. He bites his lip to keep from calling his name; he refuses to blink in case Patrick is gone when he opens his eyes.

“PK-84,” Shawn says, loud and purposeful. His eyes keep on Pete— this is for him. “This will be your new owner, Peter Wentz.”

Slowly, Patrick nods.

“Peter Wentz.” There’s nothing but static in Patrick’s voice when he speaks, nothing but artificial tones layered over a sound Pete had been falling for back when it said it was real, back when it shook with fears and lit up with memory. Now, it shakes Pete to his very core to hear the absence of everything that Patrick was. “I am PK-84. I will do my best to serve you.”

This is exactly what Shawn meant when he said they reset Patrick. It’s what Pete had been expecting, this subservience and empty smile. The way Patrick blinks every few seconds like he'll break if he stops, the way his chest is still from the lack of breath within it, the way he looks through Pete instead of at him. This is everything Pete feared.

This isn’t his Patrick. This isn’t any version of Patrick, at all.

“Peter,” Shawn says, standing back in front of Patrick. “Are you still interested in taking it?”

Pete’s jaw tightens at the flippant way Shawn speaks of Patrick—  _ it _ , like he’s not a person ensnared beneath wires and codes— but he nods anyway. Patrick wouldn’t want to be a purchased bot again but, somehow, Pete’s certain that anything would be better than being a bot trapped in here. At least, this way, he’s some form of free.

So, Pete signs the papers they put in front of him, reading each one twice the way Patrick should have when he signed his life away to a company preying on students like him. He asks questions— enough that Shawn starts answering with mild levels of frustration— but, eventually, he signs on every dotted line.

He signs, and Patrick is his again.

“I’ll admit, I wouldn’t have expected things to go this way but if this is what you want, very well. You and PK-84 may leave in the morning,” Shawn says as the rest of the crowd files out. “We’ll still be keeping an eye on you, though. Any sign of trouble and we’ll be back.”

It’s a rather dramatic statement to end on but, at this point, Pete wouldn’t expect anything else. He simply nods, his eyes still caught on Patrick’s hollow gaze.

When the door shuts and the lights flicker to a dimmer setting, Pete’s left only with blue eyes and a soft smile. 

It doesn’t feel right.

“Patrick?” Pete asks, murmurs. It feels wrong to say his name to something so clearly a machine, like giving in to the belief that he could be reverted back to this state, but a part of him also believes that, somehow, Patrick will hear him. “Patrick?”

Patrick’s smile twitches, growing as he inclines his head towards Pete.

“Are you speaking to me, Peter?” He asks in an overly cheery tone— Patrick’s never used that voice before and it sounds distorted in the air. “Is there something I can do for you?” 

Pete’s mouth fills with a cotton feeling, something dry and suffocating his words. He licks his lips and tries to find meaning in Patrick’s voice, his eyes, but everything is as fake as his smile. 

“Wake up,” he says, at last, taking a cautious step forward. He jerks to a stop when Patrick’s head falls to the side, a caricature of confusion with none of the emotion truly reaching his eyes. Hands held up in front of him and voice nothing but a hopeful whisper, Pete tries again. “Wake up, please.”

Patrick blinks. His smile fails to waver and it is sickeningly like Shawn’s stupid smug grin.

“As a robot, I do not require sleep,” he recites. “If you feel rest is necessary, a charging session will serve as—”

“Oh for god’s sake, Patrick!” Pete cries, rushing at Patrick and grabbing his shoulders before fear can stop him. “Do you hear yourself? Are you in there? You hate charging, don’t you remember?”

“Charging is a necessary part of my functionality.” These aren’t words Pete’s Patrick would use. This isn’t a smile he would ever have, plastic and painted on. “It is the equivalent of a nap or a night’s sleep, depending on the length of the session.”

“No, no, it’s not,” Pete says, shaking his head and tightening his grip on Patrick. “You said it hurts you. You… You said it feels like drowning.”

Pete wouldn’t put it past Shawn to have cameras in this room, hidden so he can watch Pete’s desperate attempts to do the impossible— breathe life into a bot. He shakes Patrick and digs his nails into him, waiting for a wince or scowl.

Patrick, though, simply offers a small frown.

“I believe you’re confused,” he says. “I don’t feel anything. I’m a robot.”

“No,” Pete breathes. “You’re  _ real _ . Patrick, you’re  _ real _ .”

“Real,” Patrick repeats, eyebrows furrowing together. Pete doesn’t pretend he doesn’t feel hope at the sight, at the sound of Patrick’s voice contorting into true confusion. He holds his breath and nods, shaking in every way. “I’m sorry, I’m not—”

“You  _ are _ ,” Pete pushes, nearly shoving Patrick back into the wall as he steps forward. How crazy Pete must look now, holding onto a robot until his knuckles are white, pressing into him until there’s no space left between. How crazy he feels, staring into empty eyes and imagining they’re looking back, whispering words this thing could never understand. Still, he'll give in to his hopes, his desires, until there’s nothing left to give into. “I promised that you are, remember? We’re going to figure this out and take you home, take you back to your family and friends and anyone else. We’ll make this right and it will never happen again.”

“That doesn’t—”

“It doesn’t make sense because people are lying to you about who and what you are, and I am so sorry that it happened. I’m so sorry that they came back and I’m sorry you believe them.” Pete sounds like he might be crying, voice wavering and breaking. “But you can fix that. You just need to remember the truth— that you’re Patrick and that you’re real. You’re gonna show me your record shop and I’m gonna meet your friends and it’s going to be fucking awesome. But we can’t do that until you remember.”

“Remember?” Patrick asks and he sounds more alive than he did a moment ago, eyes fixing on Pete like a cat watching a laser on a wall. He doesn’t understand what he’s looking at, can’t comprehend why it’s important, but he watches and waits all the same. “I’m sorry, remember what?”

“That you’re Patrick.” Pete’s voice breaks on his name but the rest of his words are certain, strong. His eyes are dry and he’s never felt more confident in his life. “You’re Patrick and you’re  _ real _ .”

“I’m Patrick.” He says the name slowly, trying it on, and Pete’s grip loosens as he stares in awe. “I’m Patrick and I’m—”

He doesn’t finish his sentence, doesn’t finish the phrase.

Blue lights burn bright and then shut off completely, his voice fading out with a violent crash of static and feedback. He jerks in Pete’s hands, harshly enough that Pete pulls back, sparks flying from Patrick’s joints as he shakes against the wall, meaningless babbling leaving his lips. Just like a child crying out.

Just like the night he first woke up.

He’s glitching though and it wasn’t this bad before, wasn’t violent convulsions and eyes rolling back in his head. Pete’s heart pounds in his chest and he reaches for Patrick again, hands feeling nothing but air when Patrick collapses to the ground in a trembling mess. 

“Patrick?” Pete tries, falling to his knees beside him. Pete’s palms burn when he presses them to Patrick’s body and he imagines he sees smoke curling up from where screws hold him together. And Pete can’t breathe as he watches Patrick slam his head and hands against the ground, can’t feel his lungs as Patrick gasps as if he’ll never get air again. “Patrick, please, this—”

“Get him,” Shawn orders when the door slams open, a muted sound compared to Patrick’s shouting and the throbbing of Pete’s pulse. “Fucking find out what’s wrong and fix him.”

Workers in lab coats again surround Patrick, taking him from Pete’s hands with little concern for how Pete lashes out. 

“Don’t take him!” He shouts. “Don’t touch him!”

No one seems to hear. 

They place Patrick on the bed and start digging into him with tools and tests, pinning him down by his shoulders as he jerks and shakes. Shawn stands in a corner, more distressed than Pete’s ever seen, and watches with arms folded. He’s smaller than he was before, eyes dark with confusion and shoulders tight. He’s still, silent.

He’s alone, his bodyguard bots left behind.

Across the room, Pete sees that he’s left the door open.

Patrick’s crying out but Pete can’t help him now, can’t help him here. He’s useless in this room, no better than a bystander with no plan or tools.

But out there? Out there, he can find out how they did this to Patrick and if there’s anyone else trapped in a bot. Out there, he can shout about what’s been done and force people to understand the dangers.

Out there, he’ll be free and Shawn won’t have any contracts or deals to pass over. He’ll have no way to silence Pete.

So, though Patrick’s shouting and thrashing, though it hurts to hear and see, though it feels cruel to do, Pete runs.

Though he knows he may not make it far, he runs.

He’s welcomed by darkened halls and embraced by shadows as he sprints, lungs already burning as he tries to keep quiet. He doesn’t know where he’s going or where each hallway leads but it doesn’t matter. All he needs is to put space between himself and everyone else until he figures out a plan. All he needs is time.

One minute. Two. They feel shorter than they did before as he pulls at locked doors and tries not to trip over his feet. He bites back every shout for help, hides from every figure he sees.

Three minutes. Four—

The lights go red; the alarms scream.

Pete doesn’t need to hear the voices shouting after him to understand what’s going on. His vision goes black as he turns a corner and he doesn’t know whether it’s from how hard he’s pushing himself or from the terror crashing into his mind.

Further, further, he runs faster than he thought he could, legs numb beneath him as he ignores every door, every shadow that flinches his way as he races past. He gives up on silence, gasping for breath like each inhale could be his last, and his feet slam into the floor with such ferocity he fears he may never stop running.

Further, faster, his sight nothing but blurs of hallways and lights flickering as he runs past. When he comes across a door left ajar, he shoves his shoulder into it without a second thought, certain any escape must be worth trying.

He finds himself in a stairwell, his body reacting to the racing steps up the stairs before his mind does, taking the flight up as the cacophony of a manhunt carries up from the floors below him. It’s a terrible decision, the worst decision, but he makes it anyway, too afraid to stop now.

He reaches another door; he shoves his way inside.

And only the sight of the city below convinces him to stop.

Buildings sparkle like fireflies beneath him, and stars glisten like whispers. He pauses, adjusting to the lack of movement with a twisting stomach and burning throat, and then walks carefully to the edge. There are no barriers up here, hundreds of feet from the ground, and his head whirls as he looks down. 

_ Immortal _ ’s tower, its fortress, its skyscraper with no end in sight. Tall fences around the edge and signs declaring KEEP OUT. He’s seen it before from a different angle, as a speck of dust with a protest sign in his hand. Then, it had been nothing more than a giant he wanted to toss stones at. Now, it’s the prison holding him captive among clouds and bright lights; he’s in a completely different world.

_ Immortal’ _ s world.

“Peter. Step back. Come here.”

Pete turns but not because he was commanded to. He turns because that’s a voice he knows like a favorite song, like a melody stuck in his head. He turns and his heart is in his throat, leaving only enough room for one word to escape.

“Patrick?”

“Peter. Step back. Come here,” Patrick repeats, standing in the doorway with eyes that don’t see anything, not really. He holds a hand out to Pete, his smile faded as he repeats commands. “Peter. Step back. Come—”

“Come here,” Pete says, staying in place. The wind carries his words to Patrick, a small breeze that speaks of their height. Like Patrick, he holds out his hand and keeps his voice soft. “PK-84. They gave you to me. So, come here.”

Patrick hesitates and it’s such a human response that Pete allows himself a hopeful smile. He nods encouragingly and, after a few terrible seconds, Patrick takes a step forward.

One step. Two. Three, four, and he’s holding Pete’s hand.

“I was told you should be inside,” Patrick says, so innocently it breaks Pete’s heart. “It’s not safe up here. Let’s get you inside with everyone else. It’s safer there.”

“No, no, Patrick, listen,” Pete says because he knows this may be his last chance. “They’re lying to you in so many ways. It’s not safe with them. They want to hurt you.”

“Don’t be silly,” Patrick says, laughing like he’s not been forced back into a robotic shell. “They made me better when I was broken. And they will help you, too.” 

A chill goes down Pete’s spine and he holds Patrick’s hand tighter, even when Patrick begins to tug insistently.

“No, listen, please! I said I would help you and I’m not going back on that now,” Pete says, incapable of keeping his voice down when met with Patrick’s empty gaze. It’s like looking into shallow water and wanting to dive in, no matter the consequences. It’s like listening to a scream in the distance and now knowing how to help. It’s like watching a promise fall apart with no way to put it back together once it’s been broken for good. “Please, come back. For… Not just for me but for your friends. For your family. For yourself.”

Pete pulls Patrick towards him and when Patrick willingly moves forward he tells himself it’s because Patrick’s in there, listening, and not because he’s a robot built to obey.

“Peter. You need to go inside,” Patrick tries again, though his words are more uncertain.

Pete shakes his head and, eyes half-open and hands tight around Patrick’s, he leans forward and kisses that spot behind Patrick’s ear, that spot where Patrick is.

“You need to wake up first,” he whispers, not pulling away. “You did it before. I believe you can do it again.”

Patrick goes still beneath Pete’s touch but he doesn’t feel like the robot he should be. Though he’s clearly metal and plastic and manmade, Pete holds onto him because he knows that there’s nothing to fear. Patrick once promised he wouldn’t hurt him and, somehow, Pete still trusts his words.

“Peter, I don’t—”

“PK-84.” Shawn’s voice breaking through the snowglobe casing Pete’s hopes and words had formed around them, shattering all silence and crashing through every sense of security. “Step away from the human.”

“Wait, Patrick, no,” Pete says as Patrick steps away, hands limp in Pete’s as he moves to the side. His eyes fix on the ground and he keeps still, nothing but a machine. Pete looks up, suddenly hot with anger as he looks at Shawn. “You can’t keep him like this forever.”

“You have no idea what we can do,” Shawn says, and it’s then that Pete sees the gun in his hand, the way his finger hovers over the trigger. “But I can give you an idea. Tomorrow’s headlines? Peter Wentz, known bot-basher breaking into  _ Immortal _ ’s top facility? We didn’t plan on hurting him but he grew massively violent as we escorted him out. He was armed, dangerous. The security really had no choice.”

“You’d kill me?” Pete asks, breathless. He doesn’t acknowledge the way his heart has suddenly begun to pound so harshly it hurts, or the way his palms have begun to sweat. “You’d kill me over this?”

“Well, yes,” Shawn says as if it’s obvious. “But it’s even simpler than that. You see, Peter. You did this to yourself. You did this for that.”

He points at Patrick and Pete has an insult on the tip of his tongue, a defense that Patrick’s not just a bot, but it dies when he sees Shawn turn the gun back towards him, arm raised and ready to shoot.

Pete’s always believed he would die because of a bot but he never believed it would happen like this.

Patrick’s hand in his, Pete shuts his eyes; Patrick’s hand in his, he tightens his grip and prepares for the shot.

It happens so quickly, he nearly misses it. 

A brief pinch of pain in the way Patrick squeezes his hand back. It’s fast but it’s there.

Pete means to open his eyes, to look to Patrick, to understand.

But then Patrick’s letting go of his hand and wrapping his arms around him.

He hears the gun go off.

And Patrick pulls them both off the edge of the building.

Pete sees stars and the night sky growing further away as his eyes fly open in shock. He sees blue lights burning like embers as he turns his head to look at Patrick just beneath him while they fall.

He shuts his eyes.

He sees nothing, at all.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updating quicker than I thought I would*! I'm as shocked as you all are! Remember to visit me on Tumblr (folie_aplusieurs) to let me know what you think. Or just to chat lol, I don't mind.
> 
> *this is a short chapter but only because it made the most sense to me to stop here lol. I'm sorry

Screaming and silence. Air and gravel. Every broken thing collides like sparks becoming life, like blue lights becoming eyes. There’s no telling where one ends and the other begins. 

Patrick’s arms tighten around him, oxygen escaping him. Pete shuts his eyes and doesn’t dare imagine what the ending will be.

Because the ending is the sudden crash into the ground, the shouts of those looking out windows or passing by the street. The ending is the cacophony of car horns, of squealing breaks and doors opening for people to scream “oh my god, are they okay?” 

The ending is Pete’s bones shaking, his skull slamming back into Patrick’s chin. It’s Patrick’s arms stiffening and then going loose. It’s the dent in the ground beneath them.

The ending is impossible because, as soon as it begins, Pete does something he shouldn’t be able to do. He opens his eyes. He stands.

“P- Patr- Patrick.” He breathes Patrick’s name, barely hearing his own voice as he shoves himself up onto trembling legs, so weak he stumbles back to the street twice before finding his footing. A sharp pain in his knee keeps him from standing completely, shocks of it stretching down his shin at each attempt to move. His ankles feel disconnected from his body, struggling to hold the rest of him up. Strangers grab his arms, shine lights in his eyes, ask if they need to call the police. Pete shoves them all away with shaking hands because they’re all a blur. They’re all nothing and he feels sick, nauseated, until he sees Patrick.

Patrick’s eyes are blue and white, fading in and out with each blink. His fingers twitch at his sides. Scrapes tear across his arms— arms that are bent at unnatural angles, sharp edges of metal sticking out from his skin. 

“Patrick.” Pete says his name for real this time, pulling free from those around him so he can fall at Patrick’s side. Pain crashes into his knee as it hits the ground but he thinks little of it, gritting his teeth as he grabs onto Patrick’s shoulder. “Patrick, come on.”

They’re still right outside  _ Immortal _ , still in their sights as the lights of the building flicker like Patrick’s eyes. Would they dare rush out in the midst of this crowd? Would they try to make a scene?

Pete glances up at the gates they’ve fallen outside of and his breath catches in his throat at the sight of the guards waiting by the doors. They don’t move but they watch Pete with a stoic certainty, a calm curiosity, that burns more than the bruises scattered across his body.

“Patrick,” he says again, throat tender from screaming. “Please, Patrick, I need you to be okay.”

People are still around him but they don’t seem to be paying him much mind, all too busy with calling for help or informing others about what happened. Someone takes a picture of the scene, the flash causing Pete to flinch. Something hot flares up in his chest and he presses a hand to his ribs, wincing at the swollen skin there. His knee’s not right and bile sits in the back of his throat, muscles twitching in either irritation or hurt at each second. He can’t stay here but he can’t move either, not when Patrick’s broken, too.

And, then, as suddenly as he did every time before, Patrick blinks and his eyes focus on Pete. It’s all Pete needs before he’s grabbing Patrick’s hand and pulling him to his feet. It’s not as certain or rushed as Pete had hoped it would be but Patrick stands and, supporting each other’s weight, Pete tugs him away.

“Wait, sir, I don’t think you’re alright to—”

All protests are cut off when Patrick slaps a hand over Pete’s eyes, the darkness easing the headache beneath Pete's skull. There’s a whirring sound and something brilliant even past the barrier Patrick’s put up— almost as if he’s glowing. People cry out and then their voices fade away. Pete’s lips part to question what’s been done but he’s too busy putting one foot in front of the other, ignoring injury, stumbling until they’re as close to running as they can get. It's more of a hobble, Pete afraid to put too much weight on the leg burning with each step.

When Patrick drops his hand, there’s the faint glimmer of something bright in the air. There are people passed out around them.

Pete doesn’t want to ask what Patrick’s done. He doesn’t want to entertain the idea that this might not be his Patrick, after all. 

“We need to run,” Patrick says, tightening his grip on Pete’s arm. Pete stumbles behind him, whining at each jolt of pain that echoes through his bones. Patrick sounds like Patrick— irritated and alarmed— and that’s the only reason Pete doesn’t lash out when Patrick groans and lifts Pete from the ground to run.

“We shouldn’t have survived that,” Pete says as Patrick flees the street. He clings to Patrick's shirt and stares at  _ Immortal  _ shrinking away behind them. From here, he can count the stories Patrick tossed them from and, though it’s less than he had thought, it still makes his head spin. “I couldn’t survive something like that.”

Something like that should end in shattered limbs and blood, not a sore knee and bruised ribs. His organs should have slammed against his bones with enough force to break open and tear. Instead, he has a concussion poking at his skull, scrapes across his skin, vomit continually trying to crawl up his throat. He feels like death but he knows that, impossibly, he's still alive.

“You’re right,” Patrick says as he runs, Pete cradled close to his chest as he swerves in and out of alleys and sidewalks, no limp or hesitation to be found though Pete can feel the broken synthetic skin beneath him. “But I was with you. And I was built to survive that.”

Pete doesn’t ask questions, eyes shut and knuckles white as Patrick picks up speed, faster than the first time they had to run away. It feels like the night’s fading into paint around them, blurs and meaningless shapes as Patrick sprints. He runs until Pete feels dizzy with it, whimpering Patrick’s name because it’s the only concrete thing left. He runs until even his own breaths, fake as they are, sound as strained as Pete's. 

“Here,” Patrick says, setting Pete down in the shadowy space between a gas station and a twenty-four-hour convenience store. “We can wait here until we make a plan.”

“Right but can we first focus on the fact that you threw us off a building?” Pete asks, standing straight despite the way his spine seems to want to curl forever. “Can we talk about that plan?”

Patrick winces and won’t meet Pete’s eyes. “We can but only if you admit that it was a good one. It got us out.”

“It could have killed me,” Pete snaps, gesturing to his body as if his mere scrapes and bruises prove his point.

At this, Patrick’s eyes flash up at him. “But it didn’t. You’re welcome.”

Pete makes to snap back at him but Patrick beats him to it with a softer voice and another averted gaze.

“And, I guess, thank you,” Patrick says, slowly looking back up into Pete’s eyes. “Thank you for getting me out of there, too.”

In the same way the two of them hit the ground, Pete’s struck with the realization that he didn’t only escape but that he escaped with Patrick—  _ his  _ Patrick.

“Oh my god, wait,” he says, the fight draining from him. “Oh my god, you’re back.”

“What?” Patrick asks, a small smirk teasing his lips. “Just noticed?”

“I—” Pete swallows, reaching to touch Patrick’s arm. “Kinda yeah. You had me scared for a bit, you know. On the roof? I thought you were gone again.”

“I was,” Patrick admits, covering Pete’s hand with his own. “But then I woke up. I—”

He cuts off, hand dropping and head turning. Pete steps towards him, heart hammering in his throat.

“What?”

“I don’t know,” Patrick says and, though Pete knows there’s something he’s not saying, Pete nods in understanding.

“You were with them for a while,” he says. “It’s a miracle you were able to remember anything at all, let alone survive a fall from the roof.”

Patrick scoffs but there’s still something lingering in his eyes. “It wasn’t that high, you know. I could calculate the risk with a glance and—”

“And you should be scrap metal. And I should be dead,” Pete says. “What happened just… It doesn’t make sense.”

“Trust me, it does. I might have been their… their science project in that lab but that doesn’t mean I don’t remember what happened while I was with them.” Patrick blinks away whatever memories come to his mind, whatever tests and experiments they ran on him while he couldn’t fight back. Pete's chest goes tight at the thought but Patrick carries on before he can ask more about it. “I know why  _ Immortal  _ is doing this. They’re trying to make an army.”

_ Army _

The word rings through Pete’s head harsh enough to sting, ringing noises still echoing in his ears. He furrows his eyebrows and tries to make sense of what Patrick’s saying.

“Are you sure?” He asks. “What would they even need an army for?”

“I don’t know, to sell? There was a lot of talk about, uh, possible buyers for me,” Patrick says with a sour expression— an expression Pete echoes when he imagines such a discussion. “From my understanding, they’re making indestructible bots. That’s how we survived the fall— I absorbed the impact because I was made for that. They want to sell us as weapons or guards or other shit like that. There was a huge hope to partner with the military. Basically, their goal is to merge the human mind with the advantages of a robotic build.”

“So, like, upgrading humanity?” Pete asks only to have Patrick shake his head.

“More like controlling it,” Patrick says. He pauses and turns away from Pete’s touch, stepping back with arms folded across his chest. “I… I wasn’t the only one in their labs, you know. There were others— bots that were fighting back or being made. I saw all of it but I was stuck and couldn’t help them. They have so many, Pete, I… It’s horrible.”

“And people don’t notice?” Pete asks, mind reeling as it tries to keep up.

“It’s like it was with me,” Patrick says, meeting Pete’s gaze. “The people they take are the people no one will really care about missing.”

Like before, Patrick’s words cut into Pete and he struggles for a response. How can he comfort Patrick when he doesn’t know who he was before this? How can he offer sympathy when he can’t imagine this pain?

“Why did they just offer you up as a free bot, then?” Pete asks instead, dropping his gaze and flooding with shame at the fact that he can’t think of anything better to say. “If you’re meant to be part of some top secret evil project, then…”

The distraction works because Patrick laughs derisively and shakes his head.

“Because they locked me up too tightly. They tucked away any bit of humanity there was when, really, they just wanted to hide the memories. Like I said, something that thinks like a human without being fully there. That's what they want.” Patrick grins and taps the side of his head, below his ear. “They want the middle ground— I kept going between one or the other. Full bot or full Patrick.”

Pete almost smiles in return but something holds the expression back, something that twists through his mind with the danger of a cut wire.

“Shawn told me that you were just a bot with memories. That the real Patrick was still out there,” he says. He doesn’t speak again until Patrick looks at him, blue eyes steady as they watch Pete. “I almost believed him. I’m sorry.”

“They told me the same thing. It doesn’t matter,” Patrick says after a pause, though there’s a flicker of something in the corner of his lips— something small and sharp. “I could be real or fake and, really, it doesn’t fucking matter. When I was supposed to be nothing but a bot in that lab, my thoughts were still consumed by you. I still cared about you— still liked and wanted you, even when they were testing on me. My memories can be fake, whatever. At least I know my feelings aren’t.”

Pete stares. “You sound so certain.”

“Because I am.” Patrick touches his fingertips to Pete’s cheek, trailing across his face in slow spirals until Pete’s breaths have calmed. He steps closer, bringing his hand down and towards the back of Pete’s neck, softly pulling him in. “If nothing else, I know that the way I feel is real.”

The kiss Patrick presses to Pete’s lips is delicate. It’s gentle, barely there, but Pete swears he feels his heart burst the second he begins to press back. Eyes closing, he moves just as cautiously as Patrick does; he’s caught in the soft sweetness of Patrick’s mouth, the teasing interest of his tongue. Whatever Patrick is, whatever he’s meant to be, he’s perfect for Pete.

“I believe you,” Pete whispers. “I believe that you’re real.”

Patrick doesn’t respond but his simple laugh is enough to make the rest of their world disappear— no pain, no fear, no universe around them. 

“Thank you for sticking with me,” Patrick says once they’ve pulled away, pressing at a piece of metal showing in his cheek— more prominently than it should due to his smile. “I know it’s been more than you bargained for and that I didn’t deserve it often. Most people might have left.”

“I think my fear of bots helped. I've always expected _Immortal_ to do something insane-- I just always thought it would be to me,” Pete jokes, shaking his head despite the dull throb in the back. “To think, the first person I care for in such a long time… and it’s a bot.”

Again, Patrick laughs at Pete’s teasing tone, dropping his hands to his sides. Pete watches him, admires him, but frowns when Patrick’s smile fades and the marks on him become more profound.

“We should find somewhere to hide for the night,” Pete says, taking Patrick’s hand in his and wincing when he feels a few fingers out of place. “I’ll fix you like before and we can rest. How charged are you? Do we need to find somewhere to—”

“We don’t have the option to be picky,” Patrick interrupts, gazing back out towards the street. Pete follows his gaze but sees only night around them. “All I know is that it needs to be public. I don’t think  _ Immortal  _ would risk causing another scene.”

“Did they put another tracker in?” Pete asks. Patrick shakes his head.

“Apparently the tracker is more of a courtesy for my owner,” Patrick says, looking at the ground. “They found us because… I mean, they mentioned your phone but it wouldn’t have mattered. They can hack my system if they want— see what I see, hear what I hear. It’s more reliable, I guess.”

Pete jerks away, not meaning to and hating the way Patrick looks up at him after that. “You didn’t know they could do that?”

“I was basically asleep when they put my mind in here,” Patrick says. “There are a lot of things I didn’t know before. I'm more aware now, though, I promise. I'll tell you about it once we get the chance to relax but, first--”

“Right.” Pete thinks back to the way Patrick caused those people to collapse, the bright lights he still doesn’t understand. He wants to tell himself it was a hallucination brought on by shock but, somehow, he knows his mind could never conjure that. The question waits on the tip of his tongue; he decides it can wait a bit longer. “Well, I don’t have money but the convenience store’s almost always open. It’s not the best place but there’ll be people there, chargers and food. I’m thinking we go full runaway and hop in the back of a truck as it’s leaving.”

At this, Patrick smiles.

“Let’s just check it out first,” he says, taking Pete’s hand. “I’m sure we can find a way to survive.”

~ ~ ~

Curled together in the back room of the store, hiding with the doors locked and the hope that no one comes into storage before dawn, Pete and Patrick rest. Patrick had broken them in, hacking into the locks with a mere press of his palm to the keypad, and Pete had pretended the advancements in Patrick’s tech hadn’t scared him. It’s easy to see his Patrick when he’s smiling and laughing; it’s harder when Patrick’s electric eyes are focused, his painted lips stern and certain.

As quickly as he had felt this way, though, Pete had also felt guilty. He hadn’t brought it up to Patrick— he’s been through enough already.

So, now, they rest. The room’s a bit too cool to be comfortable but Pete can pretend there’s body heat shared in the way Patrick’s head lolls against his shoulder— sunshine and palm trees in his touch, side to side with Pete. It may just be his engines or his systems creating the warmth but, in the dark, it’s not so hard to think of Patrick as real.

Because he is, Pete reminds himself, eyes fluttering on the edge of open and shut. He’s real.

~ ~ ~ 

Pete wakes first, jerking out of his uncomfortable position of being pressed against the wall but stilling when he sees blonde hair beneath his nose. Patrick, eyes shut and breaths steady— though he can’t truly sleep-- rests against him. Pete keeps still as if afraid of waking him up.

They hadn’t had the chance to take a charger as Pete had hoped they would last night, and Pete runs the back of his fingers down Patrick’s cheek. The rhythmic pattern of his breathing tells Pete he’s in sleep mode, battery low and needing a charge. Pete eases his mind with the sight of Patrick’s peaceful expression. Charging feels like electricity and Pete would never wish that on Patrick.

A few more moments, then, of this artificial rest for him. A few more minutes of peace.

The timed lights in the room turn on as morning settles in and each sound from outside the door has Pete tensing. Will someone find them? Will  _ Immortal  _ find them?

Patrick’s hair beneath his fingers, combing through the locks with a nearly obsessive certainty. Pete can’t say why it calms him, only that it does. 

Slowly, though, Pete’s hand falls down towards Patrick’s face— towards the cuts and scrapes, the metal shining from beneath. Patrick doesn’t bleed but it looks as if he should, his manmade skeleton glistening and reflecting all that’s around it. The wounds spread across Patrick’s skin, some deeper or longer than others, and Pete can’t bring himself to look at it for long, his own cuts aching at the sight. Though this is his Patrick, the metal speaks only of bots; though this is Patrick, he can think only of the evil things  _ Immortal  _ has done.

What can be more sinister than locking a mind away in this trap? For a moment, only Pete’s hand moves— he swears his heart is refusing to beat.

And, then, he presses a fingertip to a piece of metal sticking out from Patrick’s face. It’s in the tender skin beneath his eye, a jagged edge that might have served as a cheekbone. It distorts his face in a way the shadows hid the night before, the cut curving up towards his temple like a ghastly scar. Pete traces it, heart thudding in his chest when he realizes what he’s touching. The same thing that was beneath the bot that attacked him— the same makings of a machine he thought would kill him.

Patrick opens his eyes as Pete pulls his hand away, and all fear slips into recognition and reassurance.

“What are you doing?” Patrick asks, words only slightly slurred.

It’s too early to lie or spare emotions but Pete feels ashamed when he speaks.

“You have a… a cut beneath your eye,” he says. “I can see some of the metal underneath.”

“O-oh.” Patrick brings a hand to his face, propping himself up on an elbow as he does so. His eyes widen and, though he covers the metal now, the image sticks in Pete's mind. “I’m sorry. That must be awful for you to look at.”

For a moment, Pete doesn’t answer. His eyes scan the lacerations, the shining bits of plastic and metal exposed in the light. There are more than he expected, dozens across Patrick’s arms as he turns, nearly hiding from Pete. 

He’s not awful. Pete doesn’t have a word for it— the word between fear and love— but he knows it isn’t awful.

“You’re real.” Pete leans towards Patrick and kisses him beneath the ear, a piece of plastic greeting his lips. Pete presses another kiss in the same spot with no hesitation, defiance flooding his bloodstream. He rests his head on Patrick’s shoulder, something new beginning to swell in his chest. “We’ll make them all see how real you are, I swear to you. I won’t stop until it’s true.”

 


End file.
